Waking up once more, Qiao Yiting discovered with horror that he had been reset back to the very beginning.
That stunning fifth senior sister lunged over to cry again, that fourth senior brother grabbed his wrist again to take his pulse, the senior brother made sarcastic remarks on the side, and then Zeng Youran was once again dragged in.
“Greetings, Sixth Senior Brother.”
Looking at Zeng Youran kneeling on the ground, Qiao Yiting finally shifted from astonishment to pure terror: Could he, could he also have been reincarnated?
Then the fourth senior brother explained everything to him once more. With his heart turned to ashes and cold sweat streaming down, Qiao Yiting forced himself to speak with extreme difficulty: “Junior brother, please stand up.”
Looking at Zeng Youran before him, Qiao Yiting felt utterly dead inside. He should have known long ago that the protagonist possessed an invincible plot armor. At least he hadn’t died, which meant he wasn’t a murderer for now.
Suddenly, he noticed a detail slightly different from the previous time: Zeng Youran was actually clutching his chest from time to time this time around, wearing an expression of faint agony.
“Junior brother, what are you looking at?”
“Nothing,” Qiao Yiting forced his remaining energy to squeeze out a smile. “Thank you all for your hard work, I would like to rest a bit more.”
The senior brother seemed to have seen through Qiao Yiting’s thoughts, so he pushed Zeng Youran, who was standing in the corner, right in front of him: “Let Junior Brother take care of you!”
He subconsciously waved his hand in refusal: “No, no, how can a child take care of me?”
The others reluctantly gave up and left the room one after another.
Looking at the empty room, Qiao Yiting let out a sigh of relief. Within a single day, he had experienced a car crash, transmigration, committing murder, getting killed, and reincarnation, and his heart was completely dead.
Take care of me, my foot! Thanks to you people, I am caught in a time loop!
Transmigrate if you must, become cannon fodder if you must, but if the protagonist has an invincible plot armor rule, wouldn’t he be destined to die later on?
If Zeng Youran died, the plot would simply reset from the beginning. In other words, he was trapped inside the book! At this moment, he deeply regretted what he had done last night.
So, Zeng Youran couldn’t die, and the mountain gates couldn’t be opened. Was he just supposed to wait for death now?
The thought that he might wake up in this exact same bed for a third time and listen to the exact same conversation gave Qiao Yiting goosebumps all over his body. “This is way too terrifying! I must never let this happen again!”
Suddenly remembering the two gate-guarding boy attendants at the mountain gate, he rolled out of bed, hastily put on those intricately complicated robes, and headed straight toward the mountain gate.
With the reckless charging from that previous night still fresh in his memory, Qiao Yiting quickly found the mountain gate.
Approaching the gate, what met his eyes were still the two handsome mountain-guarding boy attendants, whose every movement radiated a strangers do not approach aura.
Seeing Qiao Yiting arrive, they hurried to bow in greeting.
“Greetings, Senior Brother Qiao. May I ask what brings you here?”
“Two junior brothers, is this gate the only way leading down the mountain?”
“Indeed.”
“If I wish to descend the mountain, what procedures must I follow?”
The young attendant with a red mole between his eyebrows smiled upon hearing this. “It is very simple for Senior Brother to go down the mountain, there are two methods. First, you must have the personal decree of our Master and Sect Leader. However, our Master and Martial Uncle are currently traveling afar on a cloud journey, and we do not know when they will return.”
Nodding after hearing this, he asked, “And what is the second method?”
His gaze was captured by the other bubbly attendant who spoke with lively gestures. “The second method is to defeat the two of us!”
“Yes, yes! We have never sparred with Senior Brother before, and we would love to ask for your guidance, Senior Brother!”
He laughed awkwardly. “Hahaha, once I recover from my injuries, I will definitely have a proper match with you both.”
After going through this ordeal, Qiao Yiting understood completely: killing the protagonist caused the plot to reset back to the moment he woke up, while in his current state, leaving the mountain was a closed door.
Therefore, such a dangerous idea as killing the protagonist could no longer be entertained. Otherwise, not only would he be trapped inside the book, but he would also be trapped within a single recurring day. Thinking of this, Qiao Yiting felt a wave of regret, why hadn’t he asked Zeng Youran to stay and take care of him just now? That would have saved so much effort! For the time being, the best way to protect Zeng Youran was also to get him down the mountain.
Yet, putting aside whether Qiao Yiting could defeat the two boy attendants guarding the mountain gate all by himself, if Zeng Youran were added into the mix, Qiao Yiting felt that doing so would only accelerate his progress toward another time loop.
“What kind of broken book is this? Why couldn’t I transmigrate as the protagonist, but had to become cannon fodder instead?” He returned to Zhiyi Hall in utter boredom.
Along the way back, Qiao Yiting mapped out his basic strategy on the mountain. He knew that with the mountain currently leaderless and the sect leader away, the Eldest Senior Brother must be handling administrative affairs, so he had to find an opportunity to persuade him; second, he needed to familiarize himself with the original body’s cultivation techniques, refine his own cultivation realm, defeat the gate-guarding boy attendants as soon as possible, descend the mountain early, and stay far away from this place of trouble.
Not only that, Qiao Yiting also thought he must find every possible way to build up favorability with Zeng Youran. Otherwise, once Zeng Youran became the Demon Sovereign, recalling past grievances, he might end up implicating the innocent.
Wait.
What if Zeng Youran also retained memories of the erased timeline? Then he wouldn’t be innocent at all. Breaking out in a cold sweat at this thought, his sense of guilt toward Zeng Youran increased a notch further.
“Should I go find him and apologize first?” Just as he was calculating how to test the waters, he raised his head and spotted the protagonist himself.
Seeing Zeng Youran standing right at the entrance of Zhiyi Hall from afar, Qiao Yiting thought: Talk about getting things without any effort at all.
“Junior Brother!”
Seeing Zeng Youran immediately turn his head upon hearing Qiao Yiting’s call, wanting to respond, the moment he raised his hand, his expression suddenly twisted and he collapsed straight downward.
“Hey!” Watching someone suddenly collapse right outside the entrance of Zhiyi Hall, Qiao Yiting rushed forward instantly. Right now, he was terrified of Zeng Youran meeting with any accident more than anyone else!
He patted Zeng Youran’s face lightly, and seeing no response whatsoever, his heart sank. Qiao Yiting’s breathing instantly grew rapid. “What is going on here, falling asleep the second he drops?”
He reached out to probe the carotid artery, but could no longer feel a pulse, while his breathing seemed almost entirely gone. Only then did he realize the gravity of the situation, could this be sudden cardiac arrest?
“Aren’t you a novel protagonist? How can you die so easily!”
Daring not waste a single second, he positioned Zeng Youran properly and began performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation. He was terrified that a fraction of a second too late, Zeng Youran would truly die and force him through another time loop.
At that moment, he recalled the description of Zeng Youran in the book: because of his special dual heritage as half-human and half-demon, perhaps due to some racial boundary conflict, Zeng Youran possessed a physical defect.
This defect manifested primarily within his heart. Raised as an ordinary human child without anyone looking after him, despite suffering bullying, the ambient demonic qi surrounding his body naturally protected his heart meridian, shielding him from experiencing any abnormalities.
However, for reasons unknown, his source of demonic qi had been sealed away by someone with malicious intent, leaving the youth without a single trace of a demonic aura. Without a protective barrier around his heart, he frequently suffered discomfort until he was eventually welcomed back into the Demon Realm, where his demonic qi source was unlocked. From that point onward, he possessed no further weaknesses, becoming practically impervious to blades and invulnerable to all poisons.
This was precisely why Qiao Yiting had managed to kill Zeng Youran so effortlessly that fateful night.
Yet right now, Qiao Yiting wanted him to live more than anyone else. Pressing down hard on Zeng Youran’s chest, his voice trembling, he muttered, “Don’t you dare die on me, buddy!”
Just then, catching sight of two figures approaching from afar, Qiao Yiting shouted toward them: “Quickly call 120, he is having a heart attack, hurry!”
Hearing the shouts, the two disciples walked over hurriedly, only to stand there completely indifferent upon drawing closer. “Senior Brother, call whom?”
Staring at the two stunned disciples, Qiao Yiting remembered his current setting and cursed under his breath, “Go to the Herb Pavilion and fetch someone!”
While speaking, his hands never stopped moving. Having no time to worry about anything else, Qiao Yiting knew that after every thirty chest compressions, he needed to deliver rescue breaths into Zeng Youran’s mouth.
Dusk was beginning to pull its dark curtain across the sky, a gentle breeze rustling the surrounding bamboo trees as fallen bamboo leaves drifted down from time to time.
Inside Zhiyi Hall, a single candle flickered, casting shadows of swaying bamboo across the room. Outside the hall stood two contrasting figures: one lay with bared chest as though fast asleep, while the other knelt anxiously beside him, hands pressing relentlessly down on his chest, pausing every now and then to press his mouth against the lips of the person on the ground.
The scene was indeed bizarre. The two disciples, previously blank with confusion, gasped in horror at Qiao Yiting’s offensive actions and bolted away in a panic, terrified that Qiao Yiting might grab them next for an inexplicable kiss, completely tossing Qiao Yiting’s plea to the winds.
Qiao Yiting had no time to explain himself to those two, because for this type of patient, the optimal rescue window was a mere two to six minutes. He had to ensure Zeng Youran was revived within the required timeframe.
Had he been in a hospital equipped with defibrillators, ventilators, and other tools, his work would have been twice as effective with half the effort. Relying solely on Qiao Yiting’s bare hands made the task far more arduous and inefficient.
Through his unremitting efforts, Zeng Youran’s previously vanished pulse began to beat slowly yet steadily. Although he recovered weak spontaneous respiration and heartbeat, the youth remained entirely unconscious.
Exhausted to the point of collapsing onto the floor, large beads of sweat bubbling up on his forehead and streaming down his cheeks, Qiao Yiting looked at Zeng Youran’s gently rising and falling chest and felt a wave of immense relief. “Good thing I saved him.”
As one of the mainstays of his hospital department, Qiao Yiting was naturally well-versed in all forms of emergency medical knowledge, frequently accompanying the department head on rural medical outreach missions. Never had he imagined his medical expertise would come in handy here.
Even though the person he saved might turn out to be someone disadvantageous to him in the future, for the present moment, Qiao Yiting was saving himself as well.
“Professionals specialize in their fields, good thing this kid ran into me.”
Yet what to do with Zeng Youran next presented Qiao Yiting with a difficult puzzle. Looking down at the awkwardly positioned child before him, he muttered to himself, “I can’t just leave him lying at the door… Without those medical instruments, how am I supposed to handle his follow-up care?”
Lifting his head to gaze at the darkened sky where specks of starlight were already beginning to emerge, he let out a soft sigh, deeply regretting his fatigued driving that previous night. If he had just made do in the duty room, none of this car accident business would have happened!
There was no medicine for regret in this world, and agonizing over it now was useless.
Since Qiao Yiting had no idea how to properly wear these ancient robes, he could only drape the garments haphazardly over Zeng Youran and reach down to lift him up. Preparing himself for a heavy lift, he was surprised to find Zeng Youran so remarkably light, so light that he felt less like a teenage boy and more like a bag of sharp, bony angles.
Gently placing Zeng Youran onto the bed, he meticulously pulled the blanket up to tuck him in, afraid the boy might catch a cold. Originally, Qiao Yiting intended to head to the adjacent room to sort out the events of the past few days in detail. However, fearing that Zeng Youran’s weak heartbeat and respiration might stop at any moment, he dragged a wooden stool over to sit by the window, intending to wait until Zeng Youran regained consciousness.
The candle on the desk crackled as its flame gradually dimmed.
After the exhaustion of this entire day, even with his intention to stand guard over Zeng Youran, his physical body could no longer resist the fatigue. Little by little, heavy drowsiness crept over him.