Chapter 116
Chapter 116
After a very, very long time, Qiao Ying sat collapsed on the floor. The dripping of blood and the wet, sticky sounds of flesh and bone being torn apart echoed endlessly in her ears, tormenting her nerves.
A breeze slipped through the door and stirred her black hair. It fell into bloodstained fingertips, which gently caught it.
Qiao Ying raised her eyes from her daze and found herself gazing into eyes as blue as the sky.
The boy seemed shrouded beneath the shadow of monsters, waiting to be divided and devoured. Yet as if he felt no pain, he only stared steadily at her.
Her heart skipped a beat. She hurriedly scrambled up. “You…”
In the blink of an eye, the world spun and that weightless sensation seized her again.
Darkness engulfed Qiao Ying’s sight. As her powerless body began to fall, warmth surrounded her, and she dropped into a familiar embrace.
“Yingying.”
“Yingying.”
“Yingying…”
Qiao Ying recovered consciousness from the darkness. When she opened her eyes, she saw a strong, solid chest. Raising her gaze, she found the young man’s face before her.
Moonlight traced the clean line of his jaw. His nose was high and straight, his lips pressed into a neat curve. The white silk blindfold fluttered lightly with his breathing, lending an added softness to his features.
“Are you all right?” Shen Qingyu stroked her face. Feeling that her body was a little cold, he pulled her even tighter into his embrace and said softly, “You’re trembling.”
The chill deep within Qiao Ying’s bones had yet to fade. She wrapped her arms around his waist with what seemed like all the strength in her body. Never before had she held him so tightly.
She had lost consciousness for no more than an instant, yet it felt as if heaven and earth had turned upside down and she had endured a separation of life and death.
Qiao Ying said, “I think I had a dream.”
Shen Qingyu gently stroked the crown of her head. “Was it a bad dream?”
She nodded. “I dreamed about a little boy. He was locked in this room, and so many people… said they wanted to be his friends.”
At the word “friends,” Qiao Ying’s hand clenched unconsciously.
Shen Qingyu had always been exceptionally sensitive to other people’s emotions. Stroking Qiao Ying’s cheek, he said, “Yingying, you want to kill someone.”
But he still remembered that Qiao Ying was different from most people. She possessed a strange moral code and insisted that killing was wrong.
Qiao Ying buried her face in his chest and admitted it without concealment. “Yes. I want to kill.”
Those people had worn ugly, hypocritical faces. Perhaps they should not have counted as human at all.
She said, “I want to kill them. I want to tear them limb from limb and grind their bones to ashes!”
This was the first time Shen Qingyu had heard Qiao Ying speak so viciously. He involuntarily imagined her killing people, and a powerful excitement suddenly rose within him.
How vivid and fierce would she look with blood on her hands and its metallic scent clinging to her?
Shen Qingyu’s fingers curled at his sides. He wished he could take her out that very moment, slaughter everyone in the city, and gift her a bloody massacre.
Holding her body, he could not resist rubbing against her as laughter escaped his lips.
Qiao Ying suddenly raised her head. “Shen Qingyu!”
Shen Qingyu’s lips curved, his smile already revealing an excitement he could not hide. “Yingying, what is it?”
“You’re getting aroused at a time like this. Are you sick?”
Shen Qingyu stopped laughing and fell silent.
Qiao Ying closed her mouth as well. She felt they ought to separate, but Shen Qingyu refused to release her. Afraid that rubbing against him would make him enjoy it even more, she could only remain still.
The two quietly held each other for quite some time. At last, Qiao Ying felt the body pressed against hers gradually lose its “threat.”
They were already an “old married couple.” Such a minor episode was hardly enough to embarrass them.
Shen Qingyu suddenly said, “Yingying, you can’t kill anyone.”
Qiao Ying asked, “Why?”
“You’ll have nightmares,” he said. “I don’t want you to have nightmares.”
His instincts should have tempted Qiao Ying into a bloodthirsty abyss. He should have wanted her to enter the filthiest depths of the world beside him and no one else.
But she was so timid. In the past, killing only one person had given her nightmares for several days.
And so the small desire in his heart to drag her down with him was forcibly suppressed.
Qiao Ying did not know why her eyes began to burn, filling with a hazy mist.
She rose onto her toes, wrapped her arms around his neck, and buried her face in the hollow there, desperately breathing in his scent.
His clothes were clean. His skin was clean. Even his beautiful white hair was clean. Yet the smell of blood that had surrounded the boy still lingered strangely at the tip of her nose.
Her breath fell against the skin of his neck, making it itch.
Shen Qingyu thought she resembled a puppy.
But gradually, he felt a damp warmth.
Somehow, Shen Qingyu was defeated just like that. Bending his back, he lowered himself and pressed one hand against her back, drawing her even tighter into his embrace. His tall body completely enveloped the woman buried against him in his scent.
“Yingying, did I do something wrong?”
“No.”
“Do you not like me as much as before?”
“No.”
Shen Qingyu pressed his lips together. “Then is my appearance no longer as beautiful as it used to be?”
Qiao Ying gave a muffled laugh. “No.”
Shen Qingyu was lost and helpless.
Qiao Ying raised her face and rubbed her cheek against his, imitating him. “Aren’t you best at sensing other people’s emotions? Feel carefully. Do I dislike you right now?”
Shen Qingyu touched the tip of his nose to hers. Then his tightly pressed lips slowly curved. “Yingying, your desire for me has grown stronger.”
Qiao Ying glared at him. “That isn’t desire. It’s affection!”
He chuckled. “You like me more now.”
Qiao Ying smiled too. “Yes. I like you more now.”
Shen Qingyu’s smile was bewitching. His fingertip touched the corner of her eye and found dampness. “Why are you crying?”
“Because I remembered that the person I like became my husband, so I’m crying tears of joy!”
The young man, who looked seventeen, was coaxed into blooming delight by that single sentence. Joyful excitement radiated from every inch of him, lightening even the stale air around them.
“Yingying, I like you too.”
“I know, dummy.”
The young man tipped his head, the ends of his white hair swaying behind him. “Yingying, I’m not stupid.”
“You’re not as clever as I am anyway.”
He still wanted to argue, but Qiao Ying took his hand and threaded their fingers together. The pleasant sensation instantly robbed him of all desire to object. He merely tightened his fingers, wanting their hands joined even more closely.
Looking at his face, Qiao Ying could not help recalling the child’s face in that vision across time. Suppressing the heaviness in her heart, she smiled.
“Let’s go. We’ll see exactly what secret Chunsheng is hiding in the inner room.”
This room had been specially repaired, presumably by Chunsheng. Farther inside stood a folding screen. Behind it, the outline of a bed could be seen, with a human figure lying upon it.
The figure did not move and looked dead.
Fear crept into Qiao Ying’s heart. She hid half her body behind Shen Qingyu.
Afraid to look, she asked, “Is it a dead person?”
Shen Qingyu said, “No.”
“A living person?”
“Not that either.”
“Then is it a Living Corpse, a Sword Spirit, or a Living Soul?”
Shen Qingyu laughed. “Yingying, you’re so timid.”
Qiao Ying pressed her lips together and moved closer to him. Summoning her courage, she opened her eyes and looked at the person lying on the bed.