In Long Xuanye’s vision, a new light screen had already appeared.
[Detected a new choice.
Host, please choose.]
[Choice One: Accept the girl’s ring and use Instant Step to leave alone.
Reward: Profound-Rank Secret Skill — Fleeting Shadow.]
[Choice Two: Save the girl before you and repel the wolf pack.
Reward: Innate Internal Spiritual Power +1, Internal Spiritual Power Awakening.]
For one instant, Long Xuanye’s breathing stopped.
The final point of Innate Internal Spiritual Power.
It also meant that these magical beasts were terrifyingly strong.
He froze.
A few seconds ago, Long Xuanye’s first reaction had been to save her.
Now…
He wanted to run.
He could not throw his own life away, could he?
But…
Long Xuanye still stood in front of the girl.
His feet seemed rooted to the ground.
He knew Choice Two meant a near-certain death.
But he did not want to leave.
Long Xuanye thought he would immediately choose to accept the ring and go.
But his movements stiffened.
He looked at the little beggar in front of him.
She was desperately trying to push him away, her eyes filled with urgency.
He had not recognized her as Sheng Cai’er, a character he had liked quite a lot in his previous life.
He only felt that he had met another version of himself.
Another unlucky person abandoned by family, struggling alone in a desperate situation.
Why?
Long Xingyu’s cold face flashed through his mind.
The humiliation and anger of being abandoned and hunted down had always been suppressed in the depths of his heart.
There was nowhere to vent it.
Long Xuanye was furious.
Furious at Long Xingyu.
Even more furious at the family who had abandoned this little girl here.
He was this miserable because he had no choice.
But now, he had a choice.
I have been caught in the rain, so I don’t want someone else to get soaked again.
This past half month of surviving alone in the forest had already filled his heart with endless restlessness and killing intent.
He could not beat Long Xingyu right now.
But these beasts in front of him…
This little girl, abandoned by her family like him…
He wanted to save her.
More importantly, that reward…
One hundred points of Innate Internal Spiritual Power.
Once awakened, how terrifying would that potential be?
He knew better than anyone what kind of catastrophe this world would face in the future.
Long Haochen would contract that God of Heavenly Wrath, Haoyue.
If his butterfly wings caused some change, and Haoyue truly walked toward destroying the world…
Without absolute strength, he would die sooner or later.
But…
“Hoo.”
After breathing out, Long Xuanye’s expression regained its calm.
There was even a trace of indifference.
He looked at the little beggar in his arms as if he were looking at a dead person.
Reason was like an icy rope, pulling back his boiling blood.
There were dozens of magical wolves.
Several of them were third rank.
His External Spiritual Power was barely close to that of a third-rank knight.
His Internal Spiritual Power was still unawakened.
What could he use to fight?
This was not courage.
This was seeking death.
A person who seeks death…
Will definitely die.
Long Xuanye slowly raised his hand.
That hand, with clear joints but stained with dust and dark red blood, reached toward the ancient ring Sheng Cai’er was offering.
He would take it.
Then live.
Long Xuanye’s gaze gradually became firm.
He had not yet taken revenge on that bastard Long Xingyu.
He had finally come to another world, a world where great power could belong to one person.
He could not die yet.
Far away, in the shadows of the forest canopy, the white-robed figure stood silently.
Approval appeared in Lin Guanyi’s eyes.
This boy’s combat footwork and will were like those of a natural knight.
But a knight’s virtue should not be foolish self-sacrifice.
In a situation of certain death, knowing how to abandon a burden and preserve fighting strength was correct.
A cruel kind of correctness.
Sacrifice was the simplest thing.
It was just dying.
What was not simple was making sacrifice meaningful.
This boy had potential.
He had kindness.
Most valuable of all, he had a powerful mind that could quickly calm down at the edge of life and death.
He was a good seedling.
However, just as Long Xuanye’s fingers were about to touch the ring…
The light in Sheng Cai’er’s eyes went out.
That faint glow called hope and warmth, which had only just been lit, sank completely into endless darkness at this moment.
So, she was still going to be abandoned.
She knew this was the most rational choice.
She had also hoped for him to choose this.
It seemed her father and mother had said the same thing.
Cai’er, there is no choice.
This is your responsibility…
But why…
Why did her heart hurt so much?
It hurt a thousand times, ten thousand times more than when a magical beast’s claws tore open her flesh.
Warm liquid slipped out of her empty gray eyes uncontrollably.
But in the next second, the feeling of the ring being taken away did not come.
Instead, that warm hand gently pushed the Forget-Me-Not ring back onto her finger.
Sheng Cai’er froze.
She raised her small face, stained with tears and dust, and looked at him in confusion.
Long Xuanye met her gaze.
“A ring isn’t something you can just give away.”
“That’s something you give when proposing.”
As his words fell, Long Xuanye slowly straightened his body.
He protected the thin and small Sheng Cai’er behind him.
The bloodstained short blade was held across his chest.
His gaze calmly fell on the dozens of glowing green eyes.
No one knew what kind of storm had raged through Long Xuanye’s mind in that short instant.
He admitted it.
At first, he really had planned to accept the ring and leave.
What kind of joke was this?
That was the final point of Innate Internal Spiritual Power.
And that mysterious “awakening” ritual.
The system’s second option had to be unbelievably difficult.
Choosing it meant death.
But then…
A trace of doubt flashed through his heart.
Why?
Why would the seemingly simplest option, “escape,” reward a Profound-Rank secret skill?
One had to know that the last time the system rewarded a secret skill, it was after he fought that second-rank Shadow Leopard to the death.
And that secret skill had not even been marked as Profound-Rank.
Its quality was most likely one level lower.
Pies did not fall from the sky.
This system would not do charity.
That meant this richly rewarded “escape route” itself carried huge danger.
It meant that if he accepted this ring and left, he would still draw a terrifying disaster.
The source of that trouble could only be the deep and powerful background behind this girl.
A girl abandoned by her family, yet secretly watched and protected by a powerful expert…
A name flashed through Long Xuanye’s mind like lightning.
Sheng Cai’er.
The Saintess of Samsara, Sheng Cai’er.
If she really was that Sheng Cai’er, then the white-robed man secretly observing them would not truly watch her die.
That meant this so-called nine-deaths-one-life situation before him was fake.
As long as he chose to stay and protect her, the white-robed man would never sit by and watch him get torn apart by the wolf pack.
This reward of Innate Internal Spiritual Power +1 and Awakening was basically free.
Of course, this was a gamble.
If he won, he would ascend in one step.
If he lost…
What if she was not Sheng Cai’er?
What if the white-robed man had only been passing by and had already left?
Then he would be eaten by these magical wolves until not even bone fragments remained.
Long Xuanye’s eyes gradually turned crazed as his thoughts surged.