“No, it’s not… I clearly…” He looked helplessly at the woman’s severed head lying on the ground. “I clearly ate her… I ate her! Look, just a moment ago her head was right in my hands! I did all of this! I’m the one who ate her!” He clutched tightly at Xie Shouhan’s clothes, his slit pupils abruptly reappearing as golden light and blood-red hues swirled within his eyes. Even though his roar was filled with extreme anger, it was laced with a profound, painful, and hoarse obscurity.
His body shook continuously, his teeth chattering with a clack-clack sound as blood-tears gushed endlessly from his eyes. Drop by drop, they fell, landing on Xie Shouhan’s black tactical jacket, blending into the dark fabric and disappearing without a trace.
“I ate her alive. She must have wanted to… live on so badly, too… It must have hurt her so much…” He lowered his head, still gripping Xie Shouhan’s clothes as he fought back the agony, pressing his forehead against Xie Shouhan’s neck while weeping nonstop. The woman’s terrified expression echoed endlessly in his mind. “…Whose mother was she… whose daughter was she… yet I… just ate her like that… Kill me… Sooner or later, I’ll… devour you, too… devour Uncle Liao… devour everyone… in the shelter…”
“…Please… kill me…” he begged in a plaintive voice.
As long as Xie Shouhan killed him, Xie Shouhan would be able to follow the modified plot, and this world would become a better place…
“…Right now… I even want to… devour you…” He gripped Xie Shouhan’s clothes so tightly that his knuckles turned white. Even though he was in such agony that his blood-tears multiplied, his craving for blood only grew more intense. Leaning against Xie Shouhan right now, he felt an overwhelming urge to devour this man completely!
Xie Shouhan gazed steadily at him. Those dark eyes remained as pure as when he had first appeared in the wasteland, reflecting only Huaisi. He slightly parted his lips, yet reached out without the slightest hesitation to pull Huaisi back into his embrace, holding him tightly as if trying to press him into his very flesh and bone. Kisses like a gentle breeze and spring rain fell upon the corners of Huaisi’s eyes, the soft tip of his tongue sweeping across the blood-stained skin to meticulously kiss away every single drop of blood-tears.
“It’s alright. Everything is going to be fine. Things aren’t as bad as you think…”
Filled with rage, Huaisi wrenched himself out of Xie Shouhan’s embrace, staring fixedly at Xie Shouhan. His slit pupils flashed with golden light, his sharp fangs bared as he spoke with a voice strained to an extreme, hoarse breath: “How could you… possibly understand me!… How could you know my pain! I ate a person! I ate someone!” His blood-tears continued to stream down. “This terrible world! What do you know! Do you understand me?!”
“You still have me, Huaisi! You still have me!” Xie Shouhan gripped his hand tightly, sliding his fingers between Huaisi’s until their fingers were fully interlaced without a single gap, pressing palm to palm. His jet-black eyes possessed the abyss-like power to swallow everything whole, yet he said with absolute firmness: “Trust yourself. You aren’t that kind of person.” At the same time, his other hand cupped the back of Huaisi’s head, bringing their foreheads together. Xie Shouhan attempted to transform himself into a sponge, retracting the sharp barbs of his nature to wrap around the scarred and battered Huaisi as best as he could. While pressing light kisses onto the blood and grime of Huaisi’s face, he kept repeating: “You didn’t eat that person. She was already dead she was already dead by the time I followed you here…”
“…Is that… tru… ly it?” Huaisi lifted his gaze to look at him, his slit pupils suddenly emitting a faint glimmer. Blood-tears brimmed in his eyes, his conjunctiva completely crimson like a solitary traveler dying of thirst in the desert who suddenly catches sight of a boundless, shimmering mirage. True or false, right at that moment, he simply wanted to desperately find something, anything, to hold onto so that his unanchored heart could find a place to rest.
“It’s true…” Xie Shouhan softened his tone unconsciously. In truth, he hadn’t yet fully grasped his own ability; he only knew it was a spatial-type power, though he always felt he could eventually develop time-related abilities. Even though he didn’t have a concrete clue yet, a vague intuition told him so. Right now, he had only one single thought: he wanted Huaisi to believe that he hadn’t committed those deeds, and the only way to achieve that was to let Huaisi witness it with his own eyes. Otherwise, no matter how many words he spoke, Huaisi would remain on the verge of total collapse.
His hand rested upon the woman’s skull, and her expression rapidly reversed backward through the flow of time. They could see the woman screaming in terror before being torn apart and devoured by the horde of zombies. The final moment before her death remained frozen in a split second of agonizing struggle and fear, her eyes fixed and motionless, until finally, these zombies actually delivered what they considered the most refined part of the human to Huaisi, who had already plunged into a bloodthirsty, mindless state. That was followed by Huaisi’s frenzied consumption.
As for the green plants they had witnessed taking root and growing wildly, it was simply because, after ingesting flesh and blood, his ability had passively awakened, triggering a frenzy of self-repair upon sensing his own blood.
Huaisi froze. However, the slit pupils gradually emitted a golden beast-like glow. The voice in his voice box strained with every ounce of endurance and trembling with breathy gasps still carried a color of absolute, ruined self-loathing as he struggled to shed blood-tears: “…What’s the use… yet I… still wanted to… devour you!!”
A trace of surprise flashed across Xie Shouhan’s dark eyes, vanishing as quickly as it came. The corners of his lips curved upward. The suppressed brow lines unfurled like snow piled heavy on tree branches being shaken off to scatter away, unfolding into a radiance so bright it felt almost dazzling. He pulled Huaisi into an even tighter embrace, his large hand pressing firmly onto Huaisi’s lower back, shoving him hard against his spine resembling an ecstatic, oversized puppy that had finally received a beckoning wave from its owner, hurling itself forward with joyful abandon, eager to tackle its master to the ground and tear into him until blood was drawn.
“Heh…” He chuckled softly, tilting his head back happily with a slender neck exposed right where Huaisi could bite him, baring his most fragile carotid artery directly before Huaisi’s eyes.
“That’s wonderful, then,” he murmured with a sigh, smiling as he watched Huaisi.
So intoxicating, truly too intoxicating.
Huaisi found himself entirely incapable of resisting Xie Shouhan’s blood. His blood possessed a far more fatally seductive allure than that of ordinary humans. Exerting his last shred of sanity, he shook his head.
He couldn’t keep going like this. He couldn’t grow addicted to Xie Shouhan’s blood. He couldn’t do this. His destiny was supposed to be killed by Xie Shouhan!!
Yet when Xie Shouhan watched him shake his head, his dark eyes darkened, the corners of his lips still curving upward as he used a sharp fingernail to slice open the side of his own neck. Pearls of blood welled up from the skin, plump and round like beads. Huaisi’s slit pupils instantly locked vertically, and unable to hold back any longer, he leaned forward, licking at the droplets of blood, deeply sucking on Xie Shouhan’s blood and gnawing at the wound until the flesh was mangled. Yet Xie Shouhan’s face maintained a constant smile throughout, his dark eyes resembling a deep abyss as if completely incapable of feeling pain.
After drinking the blood, once his sanity clawed its way back somewhat, Huaisi forced himself to pull away from Xie Shouhan’s wound, reluctantly licking the blood from the corners of his lips. He still firmly remembered the plot his mission was to be killed by Xie Shouhan.
“Kill me…” he rasped in a hoarse voice. “…Only then will the world become better…”
Only then would this abnormal world move toward normality under the protagonist’s leadership.
He grew somewhat desperate, even taking Xie Shouhan’s hand and forcing it around his own throat. “…Only you… can…”
Xie Shouhan gripped his hand, the smile fading from his face. Disregarding the wound on the side of his neck where the flesh had been torn open and mangled, his large hand effortlessly grasped Huaisi’s throat. The wound was coagulating with dark red blood, contrasting sharply against the fair skin of his neck. Releasing Huaisi’s hand, he instead used his fingertips to trace the horizontal scar spanning Huaisi’s neck. His pale fingertips rubbed back and forth against that terrifying mark, his eyes following the movement of his fingers as his gaze darkened further. With firm and steady slowness, he shook his head and said, “Not me. It’s us. Together, we’ll make the world a better place.”
“I won’t let you get hurt anymore. We can make the world better together! As long as it’s what you want, I can do anything… so…” He lowered his gaze slightly, his eyelashes trembling like delicate feather tips brushing against the innermost depths of one’s heart, his voice low and carrying a hint of entreaty, “…stop running away, won’t you?”
Huaisi stared at him, emotions gradually surfacing within his slit pupils. Yet when he opened his mouth, he fell into a fierce struggle, raising his fists to hammer against his own head.
The explicit progression of the plot required him to stay by the side of the protagonist in this novel, Xie Shouhan to serve as a stepping stone of experience for him, to be killed by him, and to become the key to unlocking the elevation of his potential. Furthermore, at this point, he was growing increasingly inseparable from Xie Shouhan’s blood; that blood seemed to possess some bizarre magic that made him lose all control every single time, instinctively lunging toward it.
Yet… yet… he wanted to…
Hammering his head, two conflicting ideologies collided chaotically within his mind. But the plot had long since taken deep roots in his thoughts; logically speaking, he ought to prioritize the plot. He had always operated this way, and that way the world would become better, too. He was willing to be killed by Xie Shouhan in his identity as a zombie, but… but he still couldn’t give a simple, affirmative answer.
“…I… I… not…”
Huaisi bent forward. With every single word he uttered, his brows knitted tighter. Clutching his head with his eyes closed, a few pained groans escaped his lips. Watching Huaisi’s agonizing appearance, Xie Shouhan froze for a moment before pulling him into an embrace, kissing his hair. Selfishly, he didn’t want to hear any answers he disliked, so he gently murmured right beside Huaisi’s ear: “There’s no rush… take your time…”
Even so, Huaisi locked his brows in pain, continuing to speak in disjointed fragments: “…The world… needs… to be… saved…” Abruptly clutching Xie Shouhan’s collar, he gasped out: “…Don’t… casually… use… that on people…”
Xie Shouhan fell silent, gazing at him quietly. Beneath his slightly grown bangs, his pure black eyes were devoid of any impurities, looking as innocent as a child as he listened to Huaisi’s words just as he always had.
Huaisi had formed this habit long ago, perhaps adopting the trait from growing up alongside Liao Muqing. Huaisi was consistently gentle and kind-natured, yet he occasionally loved preaching about principles. Back when he used to take Xie Shouhan out to hunt zombies when Xie Shouhan hadn’t yet awakened his esper powers, though his methods and combat skills were already formidable enough to make things exceedingly bloody, sometimes even encountering refugees he hadn’t really cared. But helpless against Huaisi’s soft-hearted concern for those people, there was once an instance where the zombies proved somewhat tricky. He prioritized dealing with the zombies first, but quite a few refugees ended up bitten and injured as a result.
Seeing the dazed expression in Huaisi’s eyes, he had wanted to spare Huaisi from feeling conflicted. When all was said and done, it was because he hadn’t considered things thoroughly enough. In silence, he took the initiative to step forward and end their suffering ahead of time.
Vicious, decisive, without a flicker of hesitation in his strikes.
Huaisi had been startled by his actions. He kept silent, continuously observing Xie Shouhan’s reaction, while Xie Shouhan remained as silent as usual, until they returned to the shelter, where Huaisi finally told him: “Shouhan, don’t fall in love with slaughter. Once you get human blood on your hands, it becomes very hard to wash clean.”
When he looked back, he could only feel Huaisi’s gaze converging entirely upon himself. He was the sole focus of that attention.
He had nodded, acting entirely obediently as he replied: “Okay.”
Ever since then, Huaisi had always loved lecturing him on principles, and he had listened to every single word with utmost earnestness. Back then, all of the other person’s gaze would land exclusively on him, turning him into that person’s sole focus. There were no longer any refugees or people from the shelter; Huaisi looked at him alone, as if he were a cherished private possession.
He didn’t mind acting as that blade. If the other person wrapped him in softness, then he would retract his sharp edges and hide them deep against his own skin.
“Shall we go back now?” Xie Shouhan whispered by his ear. Encountering no resistance whatsoever, he allowed Xie Shouhan to scoop him up and carry him out of that zombie den.
Their exit from the zombie den went surprisingly smoothly. Originally, Xie Shouhan had anticipated having to slaughter his way through these zombies, but to his surprise, the zombies had dispersed in advance to clear a path for them, making things much easier for Xie Shouhan. It wasn’t as if he specifically needed to kill those zombies anyway; it was completely irrelevant to him.
Right now, holding the Huaisi in his arms, he cared little for those zombies, feeling only that he held the most precious treasure in the entire world.
Take your time. There is still plenty of time ahead.
We have a very long time.