93: Chapter 93 Negotiations at the Powder Keg

Before those two words had even landed, Shen Xiao felt the metallic taste of rust mixed with a sweet, fishy scent like crushed ice shards rising to his throat.

He didn't let it spill out; he simply moved his Adam's apple up and down, forcibly suppressing it.

His tongue tasted blood, along with the dull pain remaining from his internal organs being displaced.

Meeting Xia Lengbai's gaze was like facing two bottomless, cold pools that were slowly freezing over.

Something was wriggling at the bottom of those pools—cold, focused, and with the precision of a scalpel.

"I don't want to know."

He spoke, his voice sounding as if it had been polished by coarse sandpaper—rough and hoarse—but every word was struck with exceptional clarity, each one distinct, slamming into the air that was so thick it felt tangible.

"What must one lose to become a 'vessel'."

He paused deliberately, letting the refusal and indifference in this sentence fully ferment.

Then, he continued, not speaking quickly, yet carrying an unquestionable, almost cold logical force:

"I only know that if I die right now."

"Or if I am killed by you…"

His gaze swept over Xia Lengbai's frozen face.

"Or by it."

His eyes swept extremely quickly past the dark golden Light Cocoon behind him, which was wriggling violently and emitting thoughts of anxiety and greed.

"And turned into some unknown, incomprehensible thing."

"Then you will never get the complete puzzle of those 'Memory Fragments' in your head."

He emphasized the last five words heavily.

"Memory Fragments."

It was like some kind of password, or a key.

Xia Lengbai's forward-drifting momentum came to an abrupt halt.

She stopped less than two feet away from Shen Xiao. At this distance, he could clearly see the tiny, almost invisible ice crystals condensed on her eyelashes, and he could smell the scent on her body, a mixture of rust, old paper ash, and some… extremely faint, fishy, cold scent like mud stirred up from the bottom of a deep lake in midwinter.

The Tomb Guardian Seal between her eyebrows began to flicker with an unstable, ghostly blue light, dimming and brightening with erratic frequency, like a heart with an arrhythmia that was forcing itself to stay calm.

Every flicker of the light reflected the intense conflict deep within her pupils.

Fanatical ice flames were burning, while cold calculations were settling; the two were tightly entangled, neither giving way to the other.

She lowered her head and looked at her own hands.

Those hands were slender and pale, with a trace of imperceptible trembling remaining at the fingertips.

It was these hands that had just tried to touch Shen Xiao's face, with the intention of slicing him open to study him.

Then, she looked up again at Shen Xiao.

The fanaticism in her eyes had receded, but it hadn't disappeared; it had merely sunk beneath a deeper seabed.

Cold calculations floated to the surface, covering it and forming a hard, smooth shell.

This expression, this look, suddenly gave Shen Xiao an eerie sense of familiarity, extremely like the high and mighty, unstained "Ice Soul Fairy" he had first met at the North Sea Ice Abyss.

But it was also completely different.

The coldness back then was the aloofness and indifference that kept people at a distance.

The coldness now was the sharpness of a blade after precise calculation.

"Fragments…"

She repeated, her voice as low as a whisper, yet clear enough to bore into one's brain,

"Yes… still fragments… experimental records… incomplete…"

Her icy blue pupils turned slightly, and her focus seemed to penetrate from Shen Xiao's surface, through his skin, muscles, and bones, landing directly on an invisible location deep within his body, in his Dantian, where that System Silver Pattern was struggling to hide yet still leaking a trace of faint light.

"On you…"

Her voice was even softer, yet carried a bone-chilling certainty,

"…there is the scent of an 'agreement'."

Agreement.

Shen Xiao's heart contracted violently.

Was she referring to the System?

Or something else?

Just how many lethal things had this woman dredged up from the vast, smoke-like memories of the "First Child"?

But his face remained unmoved; he even took the opportunity to nod slightly, acknowledging the vague accusation while strictly avoiding the core:

"That's right."

"You and I, and that thing."

He gestured again with his eyes toward the restless Light Cocoon,

"Are all trapped here now. All being watched by the 'heavenly dao chessboard', or something similar."

He began to weave that fragile net based on their shared predicament.

"The things in your head need organizing; you need time."

"I am injured and need time."

"It,"

He glanced at the Light Cocoon, his tone carrying a trace of imperceptible mockery,

"Needs you to interpret the information. It is more anxious than we are."

"If we consume each other, we will only rot here together. No one will get out, and no one will figure out the truth."

He paused, observing the possible cracks beneath the ice shell in Xia Lengbai's eyes,

"Or, you could try to forcibly read me. But both our states are unstable right now."

He raised his hand, gesturing with some difficulty to his own chest, where his internal Qi was chaotic and aching faintly:

"My body can't handle too much turmoil. And you? Those Memory Fragments—they've just been pieced together, they aren't stable yet, are they?

If they trigger a surge of information that completely destroys this place…"

He grinned, pulling his mouth into a cold, almost provocative arc.

"Or, worse yet, it burns the 'picture of truth' you just pieced together in your head, stirring it into a mess…"

"That would be too much of a pity."

He didn't continue.

Threats never need to be fully spoken.

In the blank spaces, imagination will fill in the worst possible consequences on its own.

The Light Cocoon where the Consciousness Entity resided emitted a dissatisfied, low hum; the dark golden light threads danced even more violently, and several waves of thought swept past, carrying urgency and warning.

But Xia Lengbai seemed to have completely isolated herself from external interference.

All her attention was focused on Shen Xiao, on the terrible prospect of "rotting here together" that he had raised, and on the possibility of the "puzzle being destroyed."

She fell silent.

Time was stretched out in the thick air; every second was like a fly stuck in a spider web, struggling powerlessly.

Shen Xiao could hear his own heartbeat, slow and heavy, one beat after another, hammering against his ribs.

He could also "hear" the faint crackling sound inside Xia Lengbai, where the Tomb Guardian Seal conflicted with an unknown power, like a freezing ice layer cracking.

Finally, the last bit of hollow calm on her face that belonged to the "Ice Soul Fairy" also disappeared.

Replacing it was a deeper, colder calculation that seemed capable of swallowing light.

It was not an emotion, but a state—an absolute rationality that converted all emotions, relationships, and even her own existence into chips of pros and cons.

This was more bone-chilling than the previous fanaticism.

"Fine."

She spat out one word, the syllable crisp and decisive, severing all the emotional tug-of-war from just before.

"I will… not touch you for now."

Shen Xiao let out a breath he couldn't even feel, but immediately tightened his nerves again.

The negotiation was reached, but it was often followed by even harsher conditions.

Sure enough.

"But you need to answer one question for me."

Xia Lengbai stared at him, her gaze as if trying to carve the mark of a contract onto him with ice shards,

"A question about a 'vessel'."

She did not give Shen Xiao the chance to choose to "answer" or "not answer"; the question had already been thrust out like an ice pick:

"'Emotional stripping'… if what is stripped away is… trust, reliance, or even… love…"

Her speech was very slow, every word sounding as if it had been arduously salvaged from the bottom of a frozen lake, carrying bone-piercing cold.

"Where does the stripped part go?"

She paused, her icy blue pupils contracting as if she had seen some extremely terrifying scene that she nevertheless had to confirm.

"Does it dissipate like ash? Or…"

She did not finish the question.

But in Shen Xiao's mind, he automatically completed the bone-chilling second half of that sentence.

Or is it stored up, transferred elsewhere, or… becomes 'nutrients' to nourish something else?

If love can be stripped, transferred, and stored.

If what a "perfect vessel" needs is precisely the emotional raw material that remains after stripping away Impurities like pain, jealousy, and resentment, leaving only the purest "love" and "trust."

Then she, Xia Lengbai—this woman meticulously set by the Heavenly Dao to be Lin Yun's "destined Dao Companion" and who should have poured her deep affection for Lin Yun without reservation… was her "love," written by "fate" and burning to the point of obsession, itself the most suitable "raw material"?

Is this "love" real? Or is it a "product" set by a program, waiting to be harvested?

A chill, sharper than any before, shot up from Shen Xiao's tailbone, instantly freezing his limbs and bones.

This was not fear of the immediate danger, but the deepest shudder at the very logic of that "emotional stripping" operation.

He opened his mouth, but found he could not answer.

Any explanation seemed pale and cruel at this moment.

Just then.

"Hum!!!"

The Light Cocoon exploded.

It was not an explosion in the physical sense, but a tsunami on the level of consciousness!

A mental shock far more violent, chaotic, and filled with extreme fear and some kind of heart-rending regret than any before burst out from inside the dark golden Light Cocoon!

"……went……!!"

The Consciousness Entity's thoughts were intermittent and shattered, like the final wail of a dying man.

"……to the cruelest… place……!!"

"……don't ask……! Stop……! Don't…… think about it anymore……!!"

The emotion within those thoughts was so intense it almost became tangible, causing the entire Chaos space to shake violently; the mire of information churned up murky waves, and the surrounding void of darkness seemed to be wailing.

What was it afraid of?

What was it regretting?

"The cruelest place"… where was that?

Shen Xiao turned his head abruptly, staring fixedly at the Light Cocoon that was twisting crazily and flashing with chaotic light.

At this moment, the System Silver Pattern inside his body also throbbed inexplicably and violently, sending a sharp warning as if stung by a power of the same origin.

Xia Lengbai was also swayed slightly by this sudden, negative emotional shock.

The Tomb Guardian Seal between her eyebrows erupted with unprecedented ghostly blue light, barely resisting the invasion of those chaotic thoughts.

She slowly, extremely slowly, shifted her gaze from Shen Xiao to the Light Cocoon that was roaring, fearing, and regretting.

Her face was devoid of any expression.

No shock, no curiosity, not even the calculation from before.

Only an absolute, ice-cold calm.

Then, she moved her lips slightly.

No sound was made.

But Shen Xiao read her lip movements.

What she said was:

"……caught you."