Wu Li remained silent for a long time before the heavy sense of loss lingering over him slowly dissipated.
Only then did he nod, burying his face in the crook of her arm. His voice was low and hoarse, yet it carried an almost imperceptible hint of lightness: "It's alright."
Afraid of the dark?
Heh—
He should be fond of it.
His thoughts were drawn back to distant memories, and he stared blankly for a moment.
When he was very young, he was taken by the High Priest to feed those Gu bugs.
Sometimes he was thrown into a pitch-black snake pit, sometimes locked in a wooden box swarming with tomb bats. The most terrifying of all was the dark pool—bottomless, hiding all sorts of horrors within.
The endless darkness accompanied him, swallowing his agonizing yet numb expressions. It was as if as long as he couldn't see those things gnawing at him, he wouldn't feel the pain.
It would be fine if he stayed in the darkness forever, if he could never see again, he told himself.
The only silver lining was that the High Priest seemed to favor his face. Those venomous creatures could bite any part of his body, but they spared his face.
"Child, your face truly resembles your mother's... She was the most beautiful girl in the Gu Tribe," the High Priest would often sigh, his tone tinged with a mix of regret and resentment.
He didn't want it.
He didn't want to be like her at all.
It was bad enough that the woman had given him this cursed bloodline, but she had also given him this beautiful, alluring skin.
As he grew older, he learned to wash his face and wear clean clothes. He wondered if, by braiding his hair and wearing silver ornaments like everyone else, he would no longer be treated as a freak.
After shedding his unkempt appearance and revealing the budding features of a young man, the way some people looked at him changed.
To this day, he remembered the fleeting filth in their eyes.
That kind of desire—treating him with the disdain of a beast, yet itching with the urge to touch and defile him.
He was only twelve at the time... yet they tried to force him to strip for their twisted amusement.
And so, for the first time, he used the forbidden dark arts of Gu magic.
Watching with his own eyes as their eyeballs rolled onto the ground, their terrified screams sounded as beautiful to him as the melodic chirping of birds.
It was all their fault...
He had intended to hide his abilities.
If the High Priest discovered that he excelled in dark magic, that his Gu-casting skills far surpassed anyone in the tribe, and that he had raised the Five Poisons that recognized him as their master, he would definitely be locked in the Gu cave forever.
However, after interrogating the entire tribe, the High Priest seemed suspicious of him and nailed him to the rock wall. Naturally, he refused to confess to the death.
Thus, the High Priest deliberately lit a torch, forcing him to watch helplessly as his body was gnawed away time and time again, only to regenerate and be devoured anew, over and over... until only a scattered skeleton remained, plunging into the dark pool.
The High Priest's suspicions finally dissipated.
As his nose and mouth were ruthlessly invaded by the freezing pool water, and a violent sense of suffocation pierced his lungs, he smiled silently.
The feeling of impending death was actually so blissful; how wonderful it would be if he could just die like this.
No one knew that for a wild ghost accustomed to lingering in the gutters, the abyss was the true sanctuary.
Like a wisp of a phantom, he lay quietly at the bottom of the pool.
Even knowing he couldn't die, he had no desire to float back up.
He would just lie here.
"Wu Li—"
An anxious voice, muffled by the murky water, drifted down from somewhere very far away...
Unfamiliar, yet strangely familiar.
He tried to discern it, but before his eyes was only endless black.
Perhaps the power of the Gu poison within him was triggered, for his mismatched eyes suddenly pierced through the gloom, allowing him to see everything in the dark with startling clarity. In the depths of the dark pool, a blurry figure was swimming toward the bottom.
"Lili... Lili!"
The muffled sound of water beside his ears suddenly vanished.
The anxious calling was right next to him; it wasn't an illusion from afar, but as real as the warmth blanketing his body.
Wu Li blinked in confusion.
"Why are you shaking so much? Are you cold?" Chai Xiaomi rubbed his hands and pulled him closer. She noticed the boy's jaw was trembling slightly, shivering uncontrollably like someone wearing thin clothes walking barefoot in the freezing snow.
It really is so cold...
He slowly closed his eyes, earnestly feeling the sun-like warmth radiating from the young woman, seeping bit by bit into his long-withered and decaying body.
He had never found the dark pool cold, nor did he find the blizzards cold.
But at this moment, sinking into her warm embrace, he realized belatedly that the bone-chilling cold had always lingered in his heart. In an instant, crossing the span of years, it finally spilled out from the depths of his soul.
"What exactly is... a cotton ball?"
The young man's spine curled slightly, his face buried in the crook of her arm. The voice that spilled out was soft and muffled, as if coming through a thick wall, or like fine, shattered raindrops falling drop by drop into Chai Xiaomi's ears.
She looked slightly taken aback, but then understood he was referring to the joke she had made earlier, comparing her cheek to a cotton ball after she bit him and pressed her face against his.
"Cotton balls are made of cotton, and they can be used to stop bleeding," she explained patiently. She paused just as she was about to say "getting an injection," and quickly changed her phrasing. "When you accidentally prick your finger while sewing, you just press a cotton ball on it for a moment, and the bleeding stops right away."
After explaining, she was somewhat curious as to why Wu Li would ask such a random question at a time like this.
She could almost predict that Wu Li's next sentence would be a sarcastic remark.
Let her guess, what would he say?
For example—
"Is your head filled with nothing but useless things? It's just a little blood, no need to make such a fuss."
Or perhaps—
"As expected, an unnecessary, stupid method thought up by an idiot."
These were all perfectly in line with Wu Li's style.
However, in the tranquil, water-like night.
She heard his clear voice ask softly, carrying a rare hint of caution, as if handling a fragile item that would shatter upon dropping, "Then... can I have another cotton ball?"
Chai Xiaomi froze in surprise.
Tonight, Wu Li was exceptionally different.
Gone was his usual cold arrogance that kept people thousands of miles away; even his sharp tongue had vanished.
He didn't state it plainly, but she knew he wasn't talking about actual cotton.
He meant the "cotton ball" she had pretended to be with her cheek earlier.
"Then may I ask this patient, where is your bleeding wound? This 'cotton ball' is on standby for you at any time." The young woman's voice was crisp and carried a touch of gentleness, yet it struck his heart powerfully, word by word.
Wu Li grasped her wrist, gently pressing that soft hand against his chest. His Adam's apple bobbed slightly as he told her very softly, "Here, it feels like it's bleeding."
Chai Xiaomi quietly felt the trembling, lonely heartbeat beneath her palm.
"Okay."
Her eyelashes fluttered slightly as she leaned in, pressing her warm, soft cheek against his chest. "Let me stop the bleeding for you."
The young man's heartbeat pulsed through the thin clothing, pressing tightly against the side of her face.
Imperceptibly, the throbbing became faster and faster, every beat feeling as if it wanted to break free from the confines of his chest and leap out recklessly.
Chai Xiaomi felt her cheeks gradually warming up, and her own heartbeat seemed to be quietly quickening as well.
Just as she was about to raise her hand to touch her own chest.
Her arm was suddenly gripped tight.
She was yanked into the inner corner of the bed by a sudden force. Immediately after, a heavy quilt was thrown over her head, burying her completely underneath.
Wu Li's sharp warning rang out: "Don't make a sound."
Jiang Zhiyu had warned her of the exact same thing earlier—no matter what she heard calling her name, she must never answer.
Muffled beneath the thick layers of the quilt, Chai Xiaomi's heart crept into her throat. She could faintly make out those eerie, familiar rustling sounds from the night before, surfacing once again.
It had come...
