420: Chapter 420 A Completely Different "Jiang You"!

The sound of footsteps grew closer.

A tall figure blocked the pale moonlight shining into the cave entrance.

The Fourth Princess held her breath, her fingers clutching the edge of the stone so tightly that her knuckles turned pale, her Heart pounding in her chest like a drum.

That figure stepped over the cave entrance and into the light of the campfire.

The flickering firelight dispelled the shadows on the newcomer's face.

Messy short hair, a black trench coat covered in dust and sand.

That cold, stern face—the one that always seemed uninterested in everything—appeared clearly before The Fourth Princess's eyes.

Jiang You carried wild fruits wrapped in leaves and a flask of clear water, looking at the girl huddled in the corner, trembling while holding a broken stone.

He stopped and frowned slightly.

"Awake?"

Jiang You's voice remained that same stiff, cold tone.

"Clang!"

The stone in The Fourth Princess's hand dropped directly to the ground, making a dull thud.

Her large, swollen eyes stared fixedly at the man before her, her lips trembling uncontrollably.

Over these past few days, she had watched her own kin betray her, watched the home where she grew up turn into ruins, and watched the guards and maids around her fall one by one into pools of blood.

She had forced herself to keep going, fighting her way through the entire Princesss Mansion, forcing herself to become a cold and ruthless killing machine.

Yet, all her disguises shattered the moment she saw Jiang You's face.

"Big liar..."

The Fourth Princess found a surge of strength from nowhere.

She scrambled up from the pile of hay, stumbled forward two steps, tripped over a protruding stone, lost her balance completely, and lunged straight forward.

Jiang You was quick-witted; he tossed the water flask aside, took half a step forward, and opened his arms to catch her steadily.

"Waaa!"

Throwing herself into that embrace, which smelled faintly of earth and blood, The Fourth Princess could no longer hold it together.

She gripped the black lapels of Jiang You's chest tightly, burying her face against him, and began to wail like a child who had suffered a great grievance.

Hot tears gushed out like a broken dam, instantly soaking through Jiang You's clothing, sending a searing heat against his Skin.

"Wooo... Jiang You... they're all dead! Xiao Cui is dead, and Nanny Zhao tried to kill me..."

"I didn't do those things... I didn't poison the Emperor! I really didn't!"

"Why did my brother treat me like this! I didn't do anything wrong, wooo..."

The Fourth Princess sobbed her Heart out, her thin shoulders convulsing violently in Jiang You's arms.

Like pouring beans from a container, she poured out all the despair, fear, helplessness, and grievances that had been pent up in her Heart over the past few days without reservation.

Jiang You stood still, letting her wipe her tears and snot on his clothes.

He did not push her away, nor did he speak those hypocritical words of comfort.

He simply lowered his head slightly, watching the girl in his arms crying until she was out of breath.

Poisoning the late Emperor?

Jiang You naturally knew in his Heart that The Fourth Princess had not done this; his primary suspect was that animal, Imperial Preceptor Wen Wangshan.

Supporting a mediocre puppet Crown Prince to take the throne, framing the most talented The Fourth Princess, killing with a borrowed knife, and seizing control of the Great Zhou court in the process.

This kind of vicious and ruthless power-grabbing drama was exactly that guy's style.

"I believe you."

Jiang You didn't waste words, simply uttering those four words in a calm tone.

His voice was not loud, but it was like a needle to calm the sea, firmly anchoring itself into The Fourth Princess's riddled Heart.

For The Fourth Princess right now, these four words were better than any panacea in the world.

She looked up, sobbing, her tear-stained face lifting from Jiang You's chest.

Jiang You still wore that cold expression.

This wasn't his fault, either.

Jiang You had lived two lives.

In his previous life, he was a standard slacker, and in this life, having transmigrated to Blue Star with memories of his past life, he had been precocious far beyond his peers since childhood.

Later, he ran head-on into that super event where order collapsed: the "Reiki Revival."

He had seen too many individuals with Supernatural Ability who had completely lost their humanity and turned into beasts after awakening extraordinary powers, and he had personally slaughtered countless madmen like Imperial Preceptor Wen Wangshan in mountains of corpses and seas of blood.

Tempered by such a cruel environment, his temperament had long since become increasingly cold, and he grew more and more averse to interacting with others.

But The Fourth Princess had long been accustomed to his cold-outside, warm-inside demeanor.

She looked at the blue stubble on Jiang You's chin and the exhaustion hidden beneath the coldness in his eyes.

She knew that this big liar must have risked everything to rush back to save her.

The Fourth Princess sniffled and reached out a small, fair, dust-covered hand.

She gathered her courage, her fingertips gently stroking Jiang You's face, which was covered in a bit of dust and sand.

"Jiang You..."

The Fourth Princess's voice still carried a heavy nasal tone, her eyes brimming with tears, gazing straight at him with clear eyes as she asked softly:

"What... what kind of person are you?"

"I want to understand you. Can you... tell me your story?"

Feeling the cool little hand on his cheek, Jiang You's gaze paused slightly.

He looked into those eyes that, despite having just experienced all sorts of upheavals, still revealed a trace of purity, and remained silent for a moment.

This time, he did not change the subject as he usually did, nor did he coldly push her away.

Jiang You pulled her to sit on a stone by the campfire.

He picked up a piece of dry firewood and poked the dancing flames, sparks flying up into the darkness.

Jiang You's gaze seemed to pierce through the stone walls of the cave and through the endless spatial barriers, returning to that azure planet.

"My story is actually quite boring."

Jiang You leaned against the cold rock wall, the corners of his mouth curling into a faint arc.

His voice, accompanied by the crackling of the dry wood, echoed slowly in the cave:

"I was born in a place called Blue Star. From childhood to adulthood, I followed the routine of going to school, eating, and sleeping."

"I originally thought that the greatest achievement of my life would be to find a nine-to-five job and peacefully be a slacker who never needed to flip over."

"Until I was eighteen."

Deep within Jiang You's eyes, a faint blue light flickered, and his tone gradually became deep and heavy, carrying the weight of someone who had crawled out of a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood:

"That year, the sky changed."

"Where I'm from, we called that phenomenon the Reiki Revival."

"The laws and morals that used to regulate ordinary people turned into waste paper overnight. The entire world regressed from a law-abiding, civilized society directly into a new era where only fists and slaughter could dictate reason!"

The Fourth Princess sat by the firelight with her hands wrapped around her knees, listening so intently that she didn't even dare to blink.

Although she had experienced court intrigue, the collapsing world that Jiang You described was still beyond her imagination.

"That was a place ten thousand times crazier than your Great Zhou Dynasty."

Jiang You chuckled, fiddling with a twig in his hand:

"Blue Star was like it had been forcefully fed a potent drug by the Heavenly Dao. To compensate for Blue Star's long-standing mediocrity, all sorts of inconceivable talents and powers erupted wildly like bamboo shoots after a spring rain."

"Geniuses? In that era, so-called geniuses were just leeks being harvested crop after crop."

Jiang You turned his head to look at the shocked The Fourth Princess and said, word by word:

"In your Great Zhou, it takes hundreds of years to produce a single Innate Divine Ability, and it shocks the entire royal family."

"But in my hometown..."

"Those monsters who awakened SSS-grade talents were as numerous as hair on an ox! Even those Mythical-grade Supernatural Ability that touched upon the laws of time, causality, and fate would emerge every few days, tearing the firmament apart!"

"It was a grand era where geniuses rose together and demons danced in chaos."

"Walking down the street, you might be buying cold noodles from someone one second, and the next second, the vendor would awaken on the spot, using a bolt of lightning to wipe the entire street off the map."