42: Wandering in seclusion

Yi Sanyi walked into his room, a bruise on his left eye and a streak of blood flowing from his nostril.

"Sniff."

Yi Sanyi sniffed back the blood that was flowing out, and as for the nosebleed that stubbornly continued to leak, he wiped it away haphazardly with his sleeve.

"Splat!"

A glob of viscous fluid smeared across Yi Sanyi's face. Looking in that direction, a pair of slightly glowing golden eyes were watching him from a dark corner.

At first glance, Yi Sanyi felt a chill down to his bones; it was the kind of fear one feels when staring into a deep pool and suddenly discovering a pair of Dragon eyes.

Even if a Divine Dragon is majestic and sacred, most people are like Lord Ye who claimed to love dragons but only felt terror when faced with one.

It wasn't until Yi Sanyi gradually discerned the face in the shadows that he relaxed, a smile spreading across his face.

He wasn't annoyed that Zhou Yan had thrown something at him; instead, he used the slime on his face to wipe his skin.

He cleared away some plasma and dust, then finally tossed the glob out the window.

"The key is only half-melted, so it seems you've been here for a long time."

"But what could have happened to make such a wonderful person like Young Brother Zhou's temper so great?"

Those golden eyes in the shadows continued to shimmer, but no one replied.

"It couldn't be because of Jia Sanyi again, could it?"

Yi Sanyi still received no answer.

Zhou Yan stepped out from the darkness. Under the faint light from the window, his face was terrifyingly cold.

What he had just thrown at the other's face was the yet-to-be-dissolved key. This action was partly to prove his strength and partly because he was purely a bit Life Qi.

Yi Sanyi saw that Zhou Yan didn't speak, but his actions had already shown that he had hit the mark.

"I really don't know how Jia Sanyi got so lucky; every good thing seems to fall into his lap."

Yi Sanyi pulled over his lounge chair and lay down on it.

"Ow, I'm exhausted. Don't be fooled by that old man—even if he can't fight, his strength is immense. He truly is 'old but vigorous'."

"If I didn't have some martial arts foundation, the version of me you'd be seeing now would be even more pathetic."

Zhou Yan remained silent.

Seeing him like this, Yi Sanyi also began to feel a bit displeased.

"Fine, fine, I've already forgiven Jia Sanyi. What more do you want?"

*Pfft.*

Zhou Yan's composure broke in a second. Looking at Yi Sanyi's thick-skinned expression, he didn't even know where to start scolding him.

Sensing the atmosphere soften, Yi Sanyi began to tell the story of another Sanyi.

In Langqi Village, a name represents a life. The reason people's surnames and given names are so strange is that they aren't actually names, but experimental subject serial numbers assigned to them by the Immortal Giant Abyss.

Like Yi Sanyi, Jia Sanyi's father was also ranked number 29, so they were both called Second Nine, though one was surnamed Jia and the other Yi.

Both of them also had an elder brother who had died young, so they were both called Sanyi, though one was surnamed Jia and the other Yi.

The 'Jia' prefix indicates a continuously recyclable experimental subject, responsible for the normal development of the village and the management of other subjects.

The 'Yi' prefix indicates an ordinary experimental subject, to be summoned and dismissed at will.

As for the 'Bing' prefix?

The 'Bing' prefix represents the lowest-grade consumable experimental subjects, which can be mass-produced and used as standard consumables.

Jia Sanyi and Yi Sanyi grew up under such a system.

Jia Sanyi's elder brother, Thirty Jia, failed his modification and died.

Thus, the Immortal Giant Abyss mercifully allowed Jia Sanyi to live as a Mortal, responsible for managing village affairs and continuing the lineage until he could provide the next experimental subject to replace him.

Yi Sanyi was different. Because he was surnamed Yi, after his elder brother Thirty Yi died, he had to continue undergoing modification.

If he also died, the Yi Bloodline would restart, and a new One Yi would be born.

Therefore, most of the elders in the village are surnamed Yi; there are many named Three Yi, Eight Yi, or Eleven Yi.

Their current branch reaching Yi Sanyi makes it the 'longest-lived' Yi Bloodline.

Yi Sanyi didn't dare to think about what would have happened if he had also failed the modification back then.

So he hated Second Nine Jia, and he hated Jia Sanyi even more.

Jia Sanyi never had to come into contact with the village's darkness; under the deliberate guidance of Second Nine Jia, he didn't even know the darkness existed.

Every day, he only needed to maintain the image of the Village Chief's silly son, run the Spirit Fish business that anyone could make money from, and finally marry a wife and have several children.

As long as one child was successfully modified to inherit the Jia Bloodline, he could spend his old age in the sun.

"Why?"

"Just why?!"

This was what the young Yi Sanyi had always thought, until one day.

Second Nine Yi said, "Son, I won't be back for dinner tonight. Take good care of yourself."

After saying that, Yi Sanyi's father led a large number of Yi-generation youths toward the Altar.

Yi Sanyi still remembered that night; he secretly followed his father and watched as his father, uncles, and elders charged toward the Immortal, only to be struck dead by countless tentacles.

When he was discovered, the Immortal wanted to kill him too, but the Village Chief arrived just in time to save him.

It was also then that the Village Chief consumed the 'bestowed treasure' from the Immortal and was promoted to Qi Refining Level 6.

From then on, the Village Chief, whose semi-fishified form was just a grass carp, actually grew four octopus tentacles and became moody.

Later, while eavesdropping on the private conversations of the Yi Bloodline elders, he finally learned the truth.

There were too many Yi Bloodline youths in that generation, and too many with good cultivation talent.

Because they didn't need so many and they were hard to manage, the Immortal Giant Abyss simply wiped them all out to directly cultivate the next batch.

It was just a whim; she even casually swatted them to death when faced with their desperate charge, because they were merely ordinary experimental subjects of the Immortal Giant Abyss.

If they had been Bing-grade, she might have even felt they were too dirty for her tentacles.

After that, Yi Sanyi grew up.

He understood that all these tragedies came from the Immortal Giant Abyss; it was never about the Jia Bloodline's oppression of the Yi Bloodline.

From that day on, a small seed was planted in his heart, and he became the Immortal's most loyal dog.

Step by step, he reached the position of the village's third-in-command, second only to Jia Sanyi.

Secretly, he began to carry out the plan in his heart, but it failed every time.

He had always thought it was because he was good at cleaning up after himself that he could survive after so many dangerous plans failed.

It wasn't until later that he discovered the Village Chief had been helping him in the shadows.

The Village Chief was still the same Village Chief, he just couldn't 'speak out' anymore.

After that, Yi Sanyi dug out the seed with his own hands and became an even more loyal executioner.

He had already lost everything, so he might as well use his redundant life to repay the Village Chief's kindness.

Because he knew that most of the Village Chief's actions were beyond his control, he always went against the Village Chief, expressing great loyalty to the Immortal and discord with the Chief.

Internally, he was completely loyal to the Village Chief; out of love for the Chief, he also decided to be loyal to Jia Sanyi, assisting him in living out the rest of his life as a naive and pampered man.

At this point, Zhou Yan's anger subsided by half.

He could hear the genuine emotion in Yi Sanyi's words; there was certainly truth in them, though he didn't know how much.

Yi Sanyi said, "I'm not saying this to wash away my sins, because every time I humiliated Jia Sanyi, I felt incredibly refreshed."

"I want to see him in despair from the bottom of my heart, so you don't need to pity or trust me."

"You just need to be more sincere about our cooperation this time to kill that dead Prodigy, Giant Abyss."

"That Jia Sanyi is an idiot. He had a perfectly good, ordinary life but wouldn't live it. Just for his daughter's future, he investigated everything until his family was ruined, and he even dragged the old man down, causing him to lose all support and become a Puppet."

"But regardless, I can't repay that kindness to him or the old man who became a Puppet. Han Yue is barely qualified enough."

Zhou Yan said, "I can only believe half of what you say. If you want me to cooperate, release Han Wenqing first."

Yi Sanyi replied, "That's easy. Although that kid is a bit thick-headed, he's still a usable combatant. Once I save him, I'll take him to the Altar. We'll wait for you there; you'd better hurry."

Zhou Yan was puzzled by this. Wait for me? Wait for me for what? But since he didn't know, he asked directly; although this Yi Sanyi wasn't a good person, he could be tentatively trusted.

"What do you mean 'hurry'? Shouldn't we go together?"

Yi Sanyi was also taken aback, only reacting after a moment.

"So you came here so early... did you completely ignore that Little Li Nu?"

"What Little Li Nu?"