Chapter 40
Chapter 40
Sometimes, Qiao Ying wondered what exactly she and Shen Qingyu were to each other.
Kidnapper and hostage?
Cat and mouse?
Or were they simply two people who could find no other ties in this world, making do together and huddling close for warmth?
No matter which relationship she used to describe them, none of them seemed quite right.
They lived under the same roof. They had kissed, and they had embraced. She was not the kind of person to be coy about it, so naturally, she could not claim the two of them were completely innocent.
In short, at some point, the boundary between him and her had long since blurred. Trying to draw a clear line between them again would not be so easy.
Shen Qingyu did not know what had gotten into Qiao Ying. She had begun taking the initiative to hold his hand, yet she did not look up or speak to him. She only remained silent, as though she had endless worries weighing on her mind.
He could only vaguely sense that Qiao Ying’s attitude toward him seemed to have changed. After all, she had even wanted to kiss him.
They followed the glowing stone wall all the way forward, wandering without aim. After an unknown amount of time, Qiao Ying finally emerged from her thoughts.
Life was short. One ought to seize pleasure while one could.
She tightened her grip on his hand, raised her face, and asked, “Shen Qingyu, does your hand still hurt?”
Shen Qingyu smiled and shook his head. “It doesn’t.”
The wounds the stones had cut across his face had already healed, and his face had returned to its pale, flawless state. As for the hand with the broken bones, the bones beneath flesh and blood were also slowly knitting back together. If someone with good hearing listened carefully, they could even hear the faint rustling sounds of bone mending.
Qiao Ying stared straight ahead and said, “Shen Qingyu, let’s make a promise.”
Shen Qingyu said, “All right.”
Qiao Ying was surprised. “I haven’t even said what the promise is, and you’re already agreeing?”
Shen Qingyu lowered his face and smiled. “Do you want my bones, or my flesh and blood? Or perhaps you want my organs?”
Qiao Ying: “…Huh?”
Shen Qingyu’s smile was pure and innocent. “If you want them, I don’t mind giving them all to you. But you can’t be too greedy and take everything at once. You have to leave me some time to recover before taking other parts of my flesh and blood. Otherwise, I’ll die.”
The white-haired youth looked utterly guileless. He was clearly using smiling words to teach her how to harvest the useful things from his body little by little, in a sustainable way, yet he said with complete sincerity, “Qiao Ying, I still don’t want to die.”
He seemed not to think those words were cruel to himself at all. He only felt that as long as he did not have to die and could keep living, that was already a kind of fortune.
Qiao Ying turned her face away and took a deep breath. Then she looked back at him. “I’m not planning to take anything from your body.”
Shen Qingyu tilted his head in confusion. “Is that so? But I don’t have anything else of value.”
“You thought I wanted to make a promise with you because I wanted something valuable?”
Shen Qingyu said as if it were only natural, “Isn’t that what human promises are like?”
Qiao Ying did not know what he had experienced in the past. The word “human” seemed to appear from his mouth quite often. She only said solemnly, “Didn’t you say I was strange? Then, before me, have you ever met anyone as strange as I am?”
“No.” Shen Qingyu answered honestly, then smiled. “Qiao Ying, you’re the first person this strange that I’ve ever met.”
That was why he longed even more for her to kill him.
And yet, in front of him, Qiao Ying could be timid. She could be weak. She could play petty tricks. But she had never once made him sense any killing intent.
He thought, This is wrong.
If she cared about him, how could she not want to kill him?
Qiao Ying said, “Since even you have never met anyone as strange as me, doesn’t that mean I’m different from everyone else? I don’t want your bones, and I don’t want your flesh or blood. I want your organs even less. What I want is for you to protect yourself properly from now on and stop getting hurt so easily.”
Shen Qingyu said nothing.
She swung their clasped hands. “Why aren’t you talking? Did I say something wrong? Not letting yourself get hurt should be something you learned when you were little, right?”
Shen Qingyu said, “When I was little, no one ever taught me that.”
Qiao Ying’s grip on his hand tightened unconsciously. She pressed her lips together and said fiercely, “Then someone is teaching you now, so remember it well!”
After Shen Qingyu walked out of the “little house,” he had met plenty of people.
Some had cursed him as a scourge, then charged at him as though bravely marching to their deaths, determined to kill him. In the end, they had turned into dried skeletons with great dignity.
Some had knelt and begged for mercy again and again. Then, once they realized they had no hope of survival, they too would become just like those dignified people from before, pointing at him and cursing him as a disgusting monster.
Now, Qiao Ying was shouting at him without any regard for her life too.
But strangely enough, she was somewhat different from those people. As for exactly how she was different, he still could not put it into words.
Shen Qingyu did not know how to face an unfamiliar situation, but he still remembered that Qiao Ying had said he was the most, most amazing person in the world. So he could only pretend to understand when he did not, his tone indifferent. “Qiao Ying, you really are nosy.”
Qiao Ying’s eyelid twitched. She withdrew her gaze and stopped talking to him.
But they had only been quiet for a short while before Shen Qingyu felt that their surroundings were far too silent, to the point of discomfort.
In the dim environment where only the sound of dripping water could be heard, the young man suddenly smiled. “Qiao Ying, let me teach you how to kill people.”
Qiao Ying trembled and looked up at him in horror.
He did not feel that he had said anything frightening. On the contrary, after sensing her gaze fall on him again, he grew even more interested.
“Killing people is very simple. If you can’t find their heart, that’s fine. Just look for the neck. You’re so smart. You only need to stab your sharp claws into their flesh, find the liveliest, hottest, throbbing vessel inside, then give it a gentle tug. Blood will gush out, and that person won’t live.”
He spoke of killing in a soft, gentle voice, yet the curve of his lips revealed a show-off sort of pride.
Shen Qingyu did not know what topic he should discuss with a girl during a silence, so he could only think of the thing he was best at. It was just like a green boy who clearly had nothing to brag about, yet insisted on telling a girl how strong and mighty he was.
Shen Qingyu felt he had taught her everything he knew, and Qiao Ying would cheer up. But he had forgotten that Qiao Ying had nearly forgotten the matter of killing someone in the dungeon, only for him to make her remember it all over again. As a result, her expression looked extremely awful.
Qiao Ying even wanted to shake off his hand, but failed. She said, “Shen Qingyu, you’re sick.”
Shen Qingyu smiled. “I’m not sick, Qiao Ying. It’s your heart that’s sick.”
Qiao Ying turned her face away and sighed helplessly.
Mistakenly thinking she could communicate with him normally; she really was the one who was sick.