202: sleep

Jiang Hanwen jumped into the courtyard. He finally understood why the Little Tyrant was so listless and dispirited. Although it was only separated by a wall, this place was completely different from his own courtyard.

Even though it was the same snow, the air was filled with a blackish-red Qi flow, as if the entire house was submerged in a black sea. On the surface of the sea, occasional boats with red lanterns sailed by, piercing through the misty surface, eerie and profound.

Lights came on in the house, and the door opened.

Zheng Yunxu, wrapped in a short-pile black blanket, leaned against the doorway.

The cold wind blew her shiny black hair across her cheek, creating an arc. The black blanket wasn't long enough to completely cover her graceful figure, revealing a pair of snow-white, jade-like feet, even whiter than the accumulated snow in the courtyard.

She looked at Jiang Hanwen curiously.

"Is something wrong?"

"Yes!" Jiang Hanwen nodded seriously.

"Wait for me to put on some clothes," Zheng Yunxu said, turning around.

"No need!"

As the words left his mouth, Jiang Hanwen's cheeks instantly burned, hot enough to cook an egg.

The girl said she was going to put on clothes, and he said 'no need.' Didn't that have a slightly huge ambiguity?

Zheng Yunxu stopped, turned her head to look at Jiang Hanwen, a mysterious, half-smile playing on her lips, her eyes blinking, naturally alluring.

"Is Shopkeeper Jiang about to go wild?"

An invisible pair of hands pushed Jiang Hanwen into the room. He didn't even know how he walked in, his head buzzing.

A lamp was lit on the table, and a half-finished Go manual lay spread on the board.

Zheng Yunxu lay on the bed, the blanket covering her body, revealing three inches of a snow-white, fragrant shoulder, truly alluring.

Jiang Hanwen's cheeks were flushed. He took a deep breath, his gaze becoming serious.

"I thought of something. Can you tell me how you killed that Ancient Witch?"

At the mention of the Ancient Witch, Zheng Yunxu's eyes turned icy.

"Bang!" The door closed, the lamp was blown out, and the room became silent, with only the muffled howl of the cold wind outside the window.

"Do you really want to hear?"

"Yes!" Jiang Hanwen answered decisively.

As his voice fell, in Jiang Hanwen's "eyes," a black-and-red mixed black hole slowly cracked open, and a world almost entirely composed of blood-red unfolded before him.

He understood. What he had seen as "black" before was not black, but too many shades of red stacked together, deepening the color to form black.

On a vast, boundless river of blood, a piece of driftwood floated.

In the middle of the driftwood, a small girl was curled up. That was Zheng Yunxu, who had been taken in back then. In Zheng Yunxu's hand, she clutched something silver and snow-white.

That was the dagger Jiang Hanwen later gave her, and it was the only white spot in the entire red world.

Jiang Hanwen walked closer and took Zheng Yunxu's slightly trembling hand.

"That day, only I survived in the underground cave..."

Just like reading a Jade Slip, Jiang Hanwen seemed to exchange Souls with Zheng Yunxu. He "saw" mountains of corpses piled in the underground cave: human, beast, withered tree vines, and the hard shells of centipedes.

A manhole-like skylight opened, and a soft yellow light shone into the cave.

"It seems my luck is really good this time," a hoarse and strange voice spoke, like two rusty metal plates rubbing against each other. Every word made his whole body uncomfortable.

In the light and shadow, a backlit face appeared.

It was covered with black incantations and carved with mysterious runes.

The entire face was as loose as tree bark, with deeply sunken eye sockets, yet a pair of eyes were large and bright, as if about to fall out.

"Hiss ~ hiss ~ hiss ~"

Thousands of snakes were thrown around.

His stomach rumbled with a hungry gurgle. The next second, he grabbed a snake nearby, bit into it, and a bitter, astringent liquid filled his mouth.

Immediately after, venomous fangs bit fiercely into his neck, a sharp pain... The door opened again and again, closed again and again.

One day, there was no more space in the underground cave, only he and countless corpses.

"Bang!"

A large hand grabbed "him" out of the underground cave and threw him onto the ground.

"He" could finally see who that person was.

His muscles were shriveled, like dried fish, with only a layer of skin covering his bones. He was hunched, and the air was filled with the stench of rotting leaves.

"He" was captured by the old hag and taken to a secret room where eerie blue lamps burned on the ground.

The surrounding walls were covered with entirely black "corpses." These corpses were held by blood-red wooden frames, with one layer clamping their necks and another clamping their ankles, like stones, covering the walls.

There were six people on each of the four walls.

"My dear treasure, from today on, you can be resurrected."

The old hag mumbled, pulling out a purely transparent box from which a red cocoon, about the thickness of an adult's thumb, rested in the center.

The world spun, and a sharp pain shot through his back.

"Crack!"

His spine snapped, and a pain so deep it reached his Soul instantly overwhelmed "him," causing him to lose control of his mind.

"He" felt something being inserted into his back, sticking like glue into the middle of his broken spine. It hurt so much!

Immediately after, the pain spread, his back became hot, and every part of his body ached to the extreme.

He heard the sound of his vocal cords tearing... He didn't know how much time had passed, but after the pain, a strong, overwhelming sense of weakness almost knocked him unconscious.

He saw the old hag sitting in front of him, holding a smooth-ended, sharp-pointed pestle, muttering something incomprehensible.

The sharp point was aimed at the old hag's own left and right hands, each receiving a jab. Gushing blood emerged. The blood from her left hand flowed into a black groove. Around the groove, strange runes lit up red, illuminating one by one. After circling the groove, the blood entered her body from the right side.

"Ooh ~ dah ~ Mondo ~ mah doo ~"

Strange murmurs came from all directions, solemn and profound, as if gods and Buddhas were bowing their heads.

Streaks of black Qi were guided from the corpses on the wall to the lit red runes, finally forming a huge blackcover that was about to envelop him.

"I cannot die, I must live!"

This was his last thought.

Enduring the ocean-like agony, she crawled forward little by little, picked up the pestle by the stone platform, and a power strong enough to destroy heaven and earth instantly filled her entire body.

He raised the pestle high and plunged it fiercely into the back of the old hag's head, who was facing away from him.

"Ah!"

Amidst a scream that could shatter one's Soul, the old hag fell into a pool of blood, her body visibly withering and turning into a section of tree root covered in green mold.

But it was too late. The blackcover was complete, and no matter how she tried to chisel at it, it was futile. The surrounding air grew thinner and thinner, and he passed out.

When he woke up, only one of the twenty-five black corpses at the edge of the room remained; the other twenty-four had all disappeared.

A strange memory from his Bloodline entered her mind—a certain knowledge that she was destined to be eaten.

She pushed aside the tree root on the ground and picked up a ring embedded with strange runes.

The moment the ring touched her finger, it transformed into a stream of pulp and melted into her hand.

He had a huge space in his mind, as large as four football fields.

Inside, only a few things were piled up... A few days later, he crawled out from underground, and the world before him brightened.

He saw candied hawthorn, steaming dumpling stalls, and the Black Wind Martial Hall sign, where people were shouting about Cultivating.

His vision blurred, and everything he saw became dim.

Jiang Hanwen opened his eyes. He was back in the room, which was pitch black.

A warm mass leaned against him, their hands clasped together.

"Plop ~"

Two tears dripped from his chin, hitting the back of his hand and splashing.

He couldn't stop crying just from seeing "his" own experience.

But someone had personally experienced all of it.

Jiang Hanwen tightened his grip on her hands and said hoarsely:

"Don't be afraid."

She didn't respond to him.

Even breathing sounded in his ear. The mass in his arms was already asleep.