Chapter 51

Chapter 51

Chi Yang was extremely paranoid; any slight rustle of grass or movement in the wind would make him bolt.

His alertness proved justified. The moment they got back into the car and started the engine, several beams of light suddenly flickered in the construction site, swaying rapidly as if people were running.

Ning Qiuyan guessed they might be the people coming to find him.

Unfortunately, it was too late. Chi Yang’s decision was too swift. He covered Ning Qiuyan’s mouth with one hand while ordering the girl to make the car fly.

Only after they had completely left that cluster of buildings did Chi Yang dial Lu Qianque’s number. He said bluntly, “Lu Qianque, you were talking so much just to stall for time, weren’t you? Are you using Ning Qiuyan’s phone to track my location?”

Lu Qianque did not deny it, but his voice was even deeper than before. “Chi Yang, it’s not too late for you to leave the person behind.”

Chi Yang gave a light chuckle at first, then laughed more and more maniacally. He shouted at Lu Qianque, “In your dreams! Listen up, Lu Qianque, I’m the one giving you the choices now! One: Guan Heng must appear before me today and personally go to the Blood Supervision Council to revoke the Wanted Order. I want to witness this with my own eyes. I’ll give you an address tonight. Two: I can keep running, and you can chase me all you want, but I’ll take Guan Heng’s Little Blood Bag with me forever and let him taste what it’s like to be one of those blood slaves. Take your pick, but if you dare make a move against me, I’ll make sure there’s nothing left of this Little Blood Bag!”

Without waiting for Lu Qianque’s reaction, Chi Yang threw the phone out the window.

The window was wide open, and the wind howled.

Morning light gradually emerged from the other side of the city, creating a strange misty blue at the horizon where the sky met the earth, tinged with a very pale violet.

Weather like this meant rain.

In Sujing’s winters, light rain often lingered incessantly, stretching across most of the season.

Ning Qiuyan’s throat and the inside of his body felt as if they were burning, yet his limbs were shivering with cold.

The girl’s mind was clouded, and the car drifted uncontrollably through the streets. Chi Yang would occasionally kick the back of her seat and curse, telling her to watch the road.

Perhaps his luck really was good. Despite the circumstances, the car managed to avoid obstacles without any real danger. It successfully stayed ahead of the spreading morning light, and just as the daylight was about to catch up completely, they swerved into a tunnel.

They got out of the car here, and Chi Yang took another feeding.

The girl still wanted to trade. Ning Qiuyan watched as she reached out her hand in a daze, only to be kicked to the ground by Chi Yang. Her craving for Huanle had obliterated her self-respect; she stumbled and knelt on the ground, begging, until Chi Yang finally placed the small vial in her hand.

Ning Qiuyan couldn’t see what happened after that. Whether the girl stayed there to consume it or drove away, he didn’t know. He was grabbed by the neck by Chi Yang and dragged forward, unable to look back even once.

The bright lights on the tunnel ceiling flickered, and together with the headlights of passing vehicles, they made Ning Qiuyan’s vision blur.

They walked along the emergency lane; the tunnel seemed endless. After walking a very long distance, they turned into a dark, small space, only about one square meter in size. It was so narrow that its purpose was unclear.

No sunlight reached this spot, and the tunnel lights couldn’t penetrate it either. One could only hear the wind brought in by the vehicles whistling through it, making a sound like ghosts wailing and wolves howling.

Chi Yang tore a strip of cloth from Ning Qiuyan’s clothes, stuffed it into his mouth, and tied it behind his head in a knot to prevent him from calling for help. Naturally, his hands and feet were never released; Chi Yang tied them up as well.

They stayed there for a long time.

Ning Qiuyan didn’t know the exact time; he only knew that the vehicles passing by were dry at first, but later they were all wet.

It really was raining outside. The dampness poured into the tunnel, making one feel groggy.

Ning Qiuyan was cold and hungry, and his body had reached its limit. However, fearing that Chi Yang would drink his blood, he didn’t dare let his guard down and only dozed off for a brief moment.

When he opened his eyes, the other man had retreated into the darkest corner, becoming a mass of murky shadow.

“It’s miserable, isn’t it?”

The other man suddenly spoke, addressing Ning Qiuyan.

Ning Qiuyan widened his eyes, struggling to stay conscious.

In the darkness, the scar connecting the man’s jaw to his neck was blurred. Only the upper half of his face was vaguely visible-it was a very young silhouette, one that could be considered handsome. Unfortunately, those eyes were filled to the brim with malice.

“You’ve only endured one day, but I’ve lived like this for fifty years!” Chi Yang squeezed out the words in a raspy whisper. “Every year, every single day, this is how I’ve lived. Do you know what it feels like to be hunted by the whole world? It means you never dare to let your guard down for a second, because if you slacken for even a moment, you’ll fall into an abyss from which there is no return.”

Fifty years.

Ning Qiuyan didn’t know how Chi Yang had survived those fifty years. Just the time from being taken from the hospital until now felt like an eternity to him. He didn’t understand what kind of grudge existed between Chi Yang and Granny Bai or Guan Heng. He didn’t know what a Wanted Order was, nor had he ever heard of the Blood Supervision Council.

The only thing he was sure of was that he knew far too little about the world of Vampires. All he had seen until now was just the tip of the iceberg-the softer, more beautified side.
He now understood more clearly why Lu Qianque had said Guan Heng hoped he would never have to know these things, and why he had been punished after recklessly running away with Ray last time.

Humans were never meant to set foot in this realm.

Ning Qiuyan had no interest in talking to a monster like Chi Yang, let alone empathizing with him. Ning Qiuyan sat on the ground with his head bowed, feeling the sharp pain where the cloth gag cut into the corners of his mouth. He couldn’t speak, nor did he want to make a sound.

He had never imagined he would be pointlessly dragged into such an incident. It turned out there had always been a pair of eyes watching him from the shadows; it seemed his life over the past six months hadn’t been as peaceful as he thought.

Not far away, cars whistled past one after another.

The silence in the darkness lasted for a long time.

Perhaps Chi Yang hadn’t spoken to anyone in too long, or perhaps he hadn’t spoken to anyone connected to his world in too long. The daylight made him feel weary and stripped away a portion of his madness, leaving behind a strange, deep-seated resentment he felt compelled to pour out.

“No… from the first moment I saw them, I was doomed,” Chi Yang continued the topic as if talking to himself. “An eternal, immortal life-how fascinating it is… You’ll become obsessed with them. You’ll want to become them, to join them, rather than standing by enviously watching your own body grow old and rot into a pool of sludge.”

At this point, he let out a sinister laugh.

“You’re the same, aren’t you?”

The strange, wheezing sound squeezed from the man’s throat was like sandpaper grinding against Ning Qiuyan’s eardrums, making him feel incredibly uncomfortable.

“Once you’ve seen that world, you can never be content with being ordinary again.”

Ning Qiuyan remembered how he felt the first time he saw Guan Heng, and his state of mind when he first learned of Guan Heng’s identity.

There might have been obsession, but there was no envy, and he had certainly never thought about becoming one of them.

Because he understood the natural divide between their species, and he understood that what attracted him was Guan Heng himself.

Chi Yang said, “It’s a pity my vision was too narrow back then. I didn’t know they weren’t the only ones-that the truly immortal are actually scattered in every corner of the world. As long as I was willing to pay the price, as long as I had patience, I would have eventually met a suitable converter. I wouldn’t have ended up in this state. Neither human nor ghost… unable to appear during the day, and now, not even at night.”

“What’s even more terrifying is… I want to die, but I can’t.”

*I want to die, but I can’t.*

That was right. Guan Heng had also told Ning Qiuyan that they couldn’t truly be killed.

“You have no idea how many ways I’ve tried. I’ve tried everything I could think of.”

Chi Yang babbled on incessantly.

“I’d rather die than be caught by the Blood Supervision Council…”

“There are people out there who have been to the Blood Supervision Council before. They say those people will put you in a cage made of reinforced steel and sink you into the deep sea.”

“That is the prison for Vampires. Hundreds, thousands of Vampires have been submerged there. It’s a place of dead silence, with no light, only terrifying deep-sea creatures swimming around you. You can’t move, and you can’t die. Hunger consumes you… You’ll spend hundreds, thousands of years in the torment of loneliness and death… until forever. No one has ever made it out of there.”

A bone-chilling wind swept through, and Ning Qiuyan’s body trembled slightly as he listened.

“The Blood Supervision Council has never stopped tracking me. I have no choice but to run,” Chi Yang said gloomily. “This is all because of Guan Heng. It’s all Guan Heng’s fault! He spouts hypocritical words about mercy and generosity, about respecting life! In reality, he’s just a control freak pervert! If he had been willing to convert me-to convert us-we wouldn’t be separated by life and death, and I wouldn’t have ended up like this!”

He grew more furious as he spoke, finally breaking into a laugh. “Finally… finally, I have a chance this time. He will definitely trade a pardon for you, ha ha ha…”

Ning Qiuyan looked up.

In the darkness, his eyes were clear, filled with fear and anger, but also much confusion.

As Chi Yang’s venomous recount came to a temporary halt, Ning Qiuyan suddenly caught an important piece of information-the man needed him as a bargaining chip to save his own life. Therefore, until he received this so-called pardon from the Blood Supervision Council, the man wouldn’t actually kill him no matter what.

But what would happen next?

Lu Qianque had said Guan Heng wouldn’t come. This didn’t surprise Ning Qiuyan; he knew Guan Heng had intended to go into hibernation after settling the affairs on Du Island.

In that case, had Lu Qianque made other arrangements?

Ning Qiuyan didn’t want to stop thinking, and he didn’t give up for a single moment on looking for a chance to escape.

But this space was too cramped. Even if he just twisted his head, his kidnapper would quickly notice his movements. Moreover, the vehicles driving through the tunnel largely drowned out any sound he could make.

The temperature in late November was very low. Ning Qiuyan was still wearing his hospital gown, making it easy for his consciousness to blur in such cold weather.

He didn’t know how much time had passed before he was kicked awake by Chi Yang again.

Chi Yang dragged him out of the narrow space. Dizzily, he saw a car parked in the tunnel, and he also saw a middle-aged man lying on the ground with blood pooling from the back of his head.
Chi Yang was bloodthirsty by nature; in his eyes, humans were less than ants.

Perhaps fifty years of life as a fugitive had made him well-acquainted with how to exploit humans and seize whatever resources he needed.

Once again, Ning Qiuyan was shoved into the backseat, his hands and feet still bound, his mouth gagged.

With the girl gone, there was no driver left, so Chi Yang had to start the car himself. He was meticulous; worried that Ning Qiuyan might escape or be spotted by someone, he specifically pushed Ning Qiuyan down and buckled the backseat seatbelt to keep him pinned.

They finally emerged from the tunnel. Outside, night had already fallen.

The city lights were ablaze as people finished their workdays, and the roads were packed with commuting vehicles. Chi Yang drove the car onto an elevated highway on the edge of the city, heading toward a secluded, sparsely populated area.

During the drive, he noticed that Ning Qiuyan had gone quiet and stopped struggling. The boy was breaking out in a cold sweat and shivering. Chi Yang finally remembered that humans needed to eat; these were symptoms of low blood sugar.

Ning Qiuyan had indeed slipped into a brief state of semi-consciousness.

He dreamed of waking up in the hospital, where Rong Qi sat casually by his bed, complaining that the dormitory fire had been caused by someone using a space heater. He dreamed of his own silhouette walking down a road, placing a bottle of warm milk on a traffic island at a fork in the path; after he left, a man in black took it.

He even dreamed that time had turned back. He was standing under the giant redwood tree at school, sending a message to Guan Heng to share the good news that he had passed his exams. When he looked up, Guan Heng was standing just a short distance away.

A long time later, the car pulled into a remote gas station.

Ning Qiuyan only regained some of his senses when he was dragged out again. Chi Yang shoved him into the gas station’s 24-hour convenience store, closed the glass door, and casually hung up a “Closed” sign.

Through a blur, Ning Qiuyan saw that the gas station’s advertising lights were all dark. Two people were lying in the corner of the convenience store, and there was a pool of blood behind the checkout counter.

“Sit!”

Chi Yang forced him down at a table, then picked up a phone from the counter to call Lu Qianque.

Ning Qiuyan couldn’t hear what they were saying because his brain was barely functioning.

Two minutes later, Chi Yang roughly brought over a bowl of instant noodles. The noodles were soaking in boiling water, the lid left open, steam rising from the bowl.

“Listen, I’m letting you eat something, but don’t try any tricks.” He habitually brought his hideous face very close. “Do you understand?”

Ning Qiuyan nodded submissively.

By the time the ropes on his wrists were untied, his hands had almost completely lost sensation. The cloth gagging his mouth was also removed, and Ning Qiuyan felt as though he couldn’t even close his mouth properly at first. The noodles weren’t fully cooked and the seasoning packets were nowhere to be found, but Ning Qiuyan was too hungry to care. He moved slowly, stuffing the noodles into his mouth one bite after another.

As he ate, he kept an eye on the situation behind the checkout counter.

Beyond the pool of blood on the floor and the faint glimpse of black hair, he could see a door behind the counter. He didn’t know where it led.

“Can I have some chocolate?”

Ning Qiuyan asked in a pleading, weak voice.

“I’m so hungry.”

Chi Yang stared at him for a few seconds before getting up to search the shelves for chocolate. A convenience store naturally had such things. Chi Yang grabbed a handful and turned around, only for a bowl of hot noodle soup to be flung accurately into his face. He clutched his eyes, howling in pain.

In that split second, Ning Qiuyan-who had only been taking a gamble-didn’t expect to hit his mark so perfectly. He bolted toward the door behind the counter and locked it tight, not forgetting to snatch the phone off the counter on his way.

The lights were on here; it looked like an office.

Ning Qiuyan didn’t have time to hesitate. He dragged a stool over, stepped up, and prepared to climb out of a small window. He knew that office doors like this weren’t usually very sturdy, but he hadn’t expected that just as he jumped down from the window, Chi Yang would smash through the door with a loud bang.

He landed on hard concrete. Ning Qiuyan’s knees slammed into the ground, the pain making his vision go dark, but he scrambled up and ran.

It was pitch black everywhere, with only the lights of the highway visible in the distance.

He ran desperately toward them, but the fence at the back of the gas station blocked his path.

By then, Chi Yang had caught up, rushing forward to pin Ning Qiuyan down. Finding strength from some unknown source, Ning Qiuyan actually managed to flip over and pin Chi Yang instead, slamming the man’s head against the ground with all his might. Chi Yang didn’t react for the first strike or two, but he was quickly pushed into a total rage, throwing Ning Qiuyan aside.

Ning Qiuyan felt the taste of blood in his throat. As Chi Yang bared his fangs in a blind fury, Ning Qiuyan shouted, “You don’t dare kill me now! If you kill me, you’ll truly have nothing left!”

Chi Yang hesitated for only a second, his head tilted, his eyes turning blood-red.

But that second was enough. Ning Qiuyan had picked up a stone from the ground. The moment Chi Yang lunged, he slammed the stone hard into the other’s face.

Vampires wouldn’t die, but they were still made of flesh and blood; they weren’t invincible.

Chi Yang let out a grotesque cry, clutching his mouth in agony as his fangs tumbled to the ground amidst thick, dark blood.
Ning Qiuyan scrambled to his feet and bolted. This time, he chose the opposite direction, rushing toward the front of the gas station where he spotted the car they had arrived in. Since he had no idea how to drive, he was forced to pass up this golden opportunity and instead sprinted down the road on bare feet.

There wasn’t a single car on the road. A human’s speed was no match for a vampire’s; he would be caught in no time at this rate.

Cold air rushed into Ning Qiuyan’s throat, making his injured lungs ache. Gasping for breath, he made a daring choice and ducked into the woods lining the road.

After running for about ten minutes, Ning Qiuyan found a spot to stop and shiveringly pulled out a cell phone.

The phone likely belonged to the convenience store clerk. It was an old model without a passcode, and though the screen had shattered during the earlier struggle, it luckily still worked. Ning Qiuyan dialed the first number in the call history.

Lu Qianque answered almost instantly. “Chi Yang, Sir has already agreed to your demands-”

“Lu Qianque,” Ning Qiuyan whispered.

Lu Qianque froze. Perhaps it was because Ning Qiuyan’s voice was too quiet, or perhaps because it was so raspy, but he didn’t recognize it at first. When he spoke again, his tone had completely changed. “Xiao Ning?”

Shadows from the trees shifted around him.

In the darkness, Ning Qiuyan constantly scanned his surroundings, responding rapidly, “It’s me. I’m alone right now.”

Lu Qianque immediately tried to soothe him in a low voice. “Don’t be afraid. We’ve already tracked the route. We’re coming to save you right now…”

He spoke very quickly, knowing that time was of the essence.

Ning Qiuyan interrupted him immediately, his voice trembling. “I got away. I’m in the woods a few hundred meters ahead of a place called Jiajiang Gas Station. I don’t know where to run.”

“Hide! Give me a little time!” Lu Qianque said. “Whatever you do, don’t leave any blood. He can smell your scent.”

Ning Qiuyan looked down. He couldn’t see the state of his soles, but he could feel a dampness. Still, he said nothing of it, only telling Lu Qianque, “Okay, I’ll wait for you.”

After hanging up, he immediately stripped off some of his clothing, tore it into strips, and wrapped them around his feet.

Nocturnal creatures didn’t just have a keen sense of smell for blood; their night vision was also exceptional. Just as Ning Qiuyan finished crudely wrapping his feet, he heard the rustling of the woods rapidly approaching his position.

He scrambled up, using the trees for support as he continued his flight.

However, there was nowhere to hide here.

The woods weren’t very large, and he soon reached the edge. Luck finally favored him-a pond appeared before his eyes.

Chi Yang also emerged from the trees.

In the dark of the night, Chi Yang reached Ning Qiuyan with a speed unimaginable for a human, but Ning Qiuyan plunged into the bone-chilling water with a loud splash.

Guan Heng never left Du Island.

Lu Qianque never took boats.

This was because large bodies of water made them feel weak, dizzy, and unable to move.

Ning Qiuyan couldn’t truly kill Chi Yang, nor could he force Chi Yang into such a large body of water.

But he could put himself there.

Chi Yang stared in disbelief, his gaze like a poison-tipped blade as he walked toward the edge of the pond step by step. For a moment, Ning Qiuyan feared he had misinterpreted the situation and made a fatal, self-righteous judgment.

However, the monster stopped in his tracks. “Get out.”

Soaking in the water, Ning Qiuyan shook uncontrollably as he slowly swam toward the center of the pond, facing off against Chi Yang across the expanse of water.

In the night, the surface of the water shimmered with a ghostly light, reflecting off Chi Yang’s bloody mouth.

He crouched down, watching Ning Qiuyan in the water. “There are still six or seven hours until dawn. In this weather, you won’t last long in the water. If you come up now, we’ll act as if nothing happened.”

Ning Qiuyan was so cold his teeth were chattering, making a clicking sound, but he didn’t say a word.

They remained in a standoff.

Powerless in his rage, Chi Yang threw stones into the water and tried to poke Ning Qiuyan with branches, but Ning Qiuyan was determined not to come ashore.

Stones began to rain down on him like hail.

As the minutes ticked by, headlights finally illuminated the other side of the woods.

Someone had stopped and was rushing through the forest at full speed.

Chi Yang stared at Ning Qiuyan with a distorted expression, then backed away a few steps and vanished into the darkness.

Lu Qianque arrived faster than expected. The people he brought with him scattered like shadows to track Chi Yang’s trail.

He came to the edge of the pond and reached out a hand to Ning Qiuyan.

That hand was pale, yet Ning Qiuyan felt a surge of emotion, finding it inexplicably warm.

Seeing that he was still soaking in the water, Lu Qianque said helplessly, “Aren’t you going to grab me, Little Puppy? If you don’t come over soon, I’m going to start getting seasick.”