"Master, be careful!" Ji Yanzhi's words had barely left his lips when he abruptly raised his hand to shield Shen Fu.
The green-eyed pupil split open from the middle, revealing rows of sharp, densely packed teeth like those of a tiger shark, and it bit down on Ji Yanzhi's arm without mercy.
"Fragrant, so fragrant!!!" The creature squinted its eyes, greedily gulping down Ji Yanzhi's blood, its entire body trembling with pleasure.
"You…" Shen Fu grabbed Ji Yanzhi's bleeding arm, trying to pry the thing off, but the harder he pulled, the deeper it bit.
Shen Fu dared not move, cold sweat beading on his forehead from anxiety.
"Master, don't worry. We can just carve it out with a knife," Ji Yanzhi said, then opened his palm, a short blade appearing in his hand. "Use this."
Shen Fu recognized the knife. In the original novel, Ji Yanzhi had stumbled upon it during a monster hunt—a blade forged from a Fierce Beast's own essence blood, its power not quite matching the Life-bound Sword Ji Yanzhi would later obtain, but more than enough to deal with a petty ghost like this.
But carving out flesh…
Shen Fu glanced at Ji Yanzhi's arm. The thought that he had been wounded shielding him from that strike made Shen Fu's heart ache with reluctance.
"Is this the only way?" Shen Fu asked.
"This wandering spirit is called a Ghost-Eye. It's bloodthirsty by nature—once it latches onto a living creature, it buries its mouthparts deep inside. The only way to remove it is to cut it out with the flesh, or wait for it to let go on its own."
"But it's burrowed quite deep, and it looks like it hasn't fed in a long time. It won't easily release its grip, so we might as well cut it out."
Ji Yanzhi seemed to feel no pain at all as he patiently explained to Shen Fu.
The Ghost-Eye, seeing the two of them so tender with each other—one unwilling to hurt the other, the other unwilling to let his companion worry and preferring to let it drink his blood—let out a disdainful snort. "Fools blinded by love."
Shen Fu had been hesitating over whether to use the knife, but at the Ghost-Eye's words, he suddenly lowered his gaze toward it.
"What did you say?"
"I said, fools—cough, cough, cough, cough!" Before it could finish, the Ghost-Eye felt its throat burn, then erupted into violent coughing. "What is… cough, cough, cough! What is this! Cough, cough!"
The moment it opened its mouth, Shen Fu seized the opportunity to grab another handful from his pack and stuff it into the creature's mouth. "Poison. Specially made for you. If you don't let go, I'll poison you to death."
Shen Fu's voice was cold, utterly flat in tone, yet it made the Ghost-Eye shudder. It rolled its eye around frantically, coughing uncontrollably, and finally had no choice but to release its grip.
The instant it detached from Ji Yanzhi's arm, it spitefully tore off a chunk of flesh with it.
Blood spilled across the ground. Seeing the Ghost-Eye about to flee, Shen Fu scattered another handful of powder. "Stop. Did I say you could leave?"
The powder rained down, and the Ghost-Eye inhaled a mouthful before it could react. It abandoned the flesh in its mouth, its entire eyeball rolling across the floor as it coughed violently.
The Ghost-Eye genuinely believed it was dying from the poison. Its throat felt like it was being scorched by flames, the pain unbearable, and its whole body seemed to burn along with it.
Seeing that it could no longer move, Shen Fu added flatly: "The more you move, the faster the poison spreads. If you want to die, keep going."
At that, the eye didn't dare move at all, shrinking on the floor and letting out hoarse, eerie whimpering sounds.
Shen Fu ignored it. He casually opened his pack, took out a steamed bun, and split it open—white powder spilling out from within.
"Don't be afraid," Shen Fu said, taking Ji Yanzhi's arm. "This is a healing salve. It'll close up quickly once applied."
He carefully dusted the medicinal powder over Ji Yanzhi's wound, and as if afraid Ji Yanzhi might feel pain, he instinctively pursed his lips and blew gently on it.
From Ji Yanzhi's angle, Shen Fu's eyes were veiled by long, thick lashes, his fair, porcelain-like cheeks slightly puffed as cool air flowed out. It felt pleasant, yet Ji Yanzhi's ears burned red as he turned his head away, not daring to look again.
After tending to Ji Yanzhi's wound, Shen Fu bent down and pinched the ugly thing off the floor.
"Hero! Hero, spare me! Give me, give me the antidote! I'm dying, I'm really dying! I beg you, I beg you—I can tell you where all the other Ghost-Eyes are hiding around here. Go kill them instead, please! Kill them!"
The Ghost-Eye even twisted its face into a fawning expression. "Please, cough, cough, cough—give me, give me the antidote…"
Shen Fu furrowed his brow, unwilling to listen to more of its nonsense. Just as he was about to crush it, the Ghost-Eye let out a hoarse scream: "I know him! I know the person beside you! Him! It's him—Ji Yanzhi, I know him, cough, cough, cough."
Its throat was already raw from coughing, yet in its dying moments, it still forced out that cry.
Shen Fu froze for a moment, and the Ghost-Eye seized the opportunity, speaking urgently: "He—he's the murderer! He's the murderer!"
Ji Yanzhi's expression didn't change at the words, but he tightened his grip on the short blade and turned to look at it, murderous intent surging in his eyes.
The Ghost-Eye, of course, knew which of the two was truly in charge, so it paid Ji Yanzhi no mind at all.
"I was right there when he was born! He's a malevolent spirit, a vengeful ghost! Not long after his birth, he killed his own brothers and sisters—the entire Li family village, everyone except him, was struck by plague! He's a curse, a walking disaster!"
The Ghost-Eye seemed terrified, its words jumbled and frantic. The original text had never mentioned Ji Yanzhi having siblings, let alone any plague.
"Nonsense." Shen Fu assumed it was just desperate to save its life, so he raised his hand to end it, completely failing to notice Ji Yanzhi standing beside him, his face having gone completely dark.
The Ghost-Eye was terrified and quickly scrambled to offer more compelling evidence: "When he cried out at birth, all the divine statues within a hundred meters toppled over! His parents, stripped of the gods' protection, fell gravely ill just two months after he was born. They locked him in the cellar—a whole month with no food, no water—and he still survived! If that's not a monster, what is?! I was there, right there at the time! You can ask him, ask him!"
With that, the Ghost-Eye whipped its head around and glared viciously at Ji Yanzhi. "I called to you! I kept calling to you from the cellar—don't you remember? Li Yan."
Li Yan.
It had been a long time since anyone had called him by that name.
Torrential memories surged up like a flood of beasts, crashing against his sanity again and again.
"He's a curse! Kill him—kill him and you'll be rid of this disaster!"
"Two children in the family with weak fates have already been killed by him! Why are you still keeping him around?!"
"That's right, why even give him a name? He's not worthy of the surname Li. The sooner he breathes his last, the better—just call him Li Yan, 'swallow your last breath.'"
"Yes, suffocate him! Smother him! His very existence offends the gods' majesty—only by killing him can we appease their wrath…"
The faces of those people in his memories had long since blurred. Ji Yanzhi only remembered being hung over the village's ancient well, with people intending to drown him. In the water, dozens upon dozens of Ghost-Eyes clung to the well's edge, staring at him with greedy hunger, as if ready to tear him apart and devour him at any moment.
He had soaked in that water for so, so long. He didn't die. Only when the rope had rotted thin from the water did he grab hold of the stone wall and climb out, step by step.
The Ghost-Eyes couldn't eat him, so they followed behind him, trailing him all the way back home.
When the villagers saw him, they looked as if they'd seen a ghost, their courage shattered. But at the time, he just wanted to go home. He just thought—the water was so cold.
What happened after that? He couldn't remember clearly. It seemed like only darkness remained before his eyes. He was locked in the cellar—no water, no food, not even fresh air. The Ghost-Eyes that had initially kept him company were gone too, leaving only one last one beside him, calling out to him endlessly.
"Just die already. No one wants you alive. Die, Li Yan. Don't stay in this world—no one likes you. When you die, I can eat you…"
So it was this one.
Seeing that its words had an effect on Shen Fu, the Ghost-Eye grew even more frantic: "He came back to take revenge on the people of Li family village! He hates everyone here—he wishes he could slaughter them all! Don't trust him! Only by leaving him can you survive! Everyone who gets close to him dies—they all die!"
Shen Fu listened with furrowed brows, his feelings somewhat complicated. He turned to look at Ji Yanzhi. "Is what it said true?"
Ji Yanzhi could have squeezed out a few tears and played the pitiful victim like before, but for some reason, this time he didn't.
He simply looked at Shen Fu with those amber eyes, saying nothing yet somehow saying everything.
Shen Fu froze, and almost instinctively asked, "Were you cold?"
Ji Yanzhi's clenched fists suddenly loosened, leaving only deep nail marks in his palms. "Wh-what did you say?"
"Soaked in that well water—were you cold?"
Shen Fu looked at him and, for no particular reason, thought of the time Ji Yanzhi had burned his own lifespan to suppress the Blood Trace, then foolishly crouched outside the door all night afterward.
Ji Yanzhi suddenly felt a bitterness rise in his throat. He struggled to open his mouth and mumbled something—even he himself couldn't hear what he said.
Shen Fu, after listening, simply patted the back of his hand gently. Then he raised his hand, yanked out one of the Ghost-Eye's sharp fangs, cutting off its wailing pleas for an antidote, and casually crushed it before tossing it into the grass.
"Let's go," Shen Fu said. "Hopefully we can reach Li family village by tonight."
He tugged at Ji Yanzhi's sleeve, then stepped forward and walked on.
Ji Yanzhi stood in place, unable to snap out of it for a long time.
"You don't believe it?" he suddenly spoke, and Shen Fu's footsteps paused as well.
A stretch of distance lay between them, neither able to see the other's face clearly.
"Believe what?" Shen Fu's voice was faint, hidden in the darkness, as if coming from somewhere far away.
"What it said."
"…"
Shen Fu couldn't quite say whether he believed it or not. Even now, he still harbored suspicion toward Ji Yanzhi—in fact, he had come here precisely to investigate why the people of Li family village had died.
By all logic, he should have believed it.
But when he heard the Ghost-Eye say that Ji Yanzhi had been soaked in the well water, submerged until the rope snapped before he could climb out, only one thought remained in his mind—being in there for so long, were you afraid, were you cold.
It felt like he had heard this story before, a long time ago. It felt like he had asked this very question a long time ago.
"Ji Yanzhi, you must have been so cold in there all alone. But it won't be like that anymore. With me by your side, no one will dare throw you into a well again."
Shen Fu froze. His face felt prickly and warm. He raised his hand and touched a tear.
This… what is this?