The rock-drilling machine was badly damaged, and the area around them buzzed with deafening mechanical noise. Leaning against the stone wall, Cheng Li gradually fell asleep just like that.
Seeing this, Yuan Mu unconsciously slowed down while repairing the drilling machine. A machine that should have taken only an hour to fix still wasn’t done even after two hours.
When Cheng Li woke from her nap, he was still working.
By then, he was covered head to toe in dust. His handsome face was so grimy that his original features were hard to make out, though one could still vaguely tell that his features were deep-set and sharply defined. Especially those eyes of his, dark as ink, as though they could pull people in.
“You’re awake?” Yuan Mu’s voice was slightly hoarse.
Cheng Li gave a soft hum and got up from the ground. “Can it still be repaired?”
“It’s done,” Yuan Mu said as he put away the tools. “Try it.”
Cheng Li raised a brow. What a coincidence. The moment she woke up, it was fixed.
She sat down and tried starting it. Sure enough, there was no problem at all.
Clang! Clang! Clang!
The sound of a gong rang out, and everyone froze instinctively, stopping what they were doing.
Then the cold, emotionless voice of a star pirate came through the loudspeaker.
“All of you, listen up. Starting from this second, you have four hours to rest. Four hours later, return to your assigned positions and continue working.”
Cheng Li immediately abandoned the drilling machine and crouched in front of Yuan Mu. “Get on. Let’s hurry back up.”
Yuan Mu pressed his lips together but didn’t refuse. He climbed onto her back.
After nearly thirty hours without proper rest, the pain from his severed limbs had long become unbearable. Even his hands were trembling from exhaustion. Trying to “walk” himself back to the surface would have been extremely difficult.
Cheng Li hoisted Yuan Mu onto her back, called for Uncle Zhao, and the three of them headed together toward the elevator platform.
After coming up from the mine tunnels to the surface, they had to pass through a device similar to a full-body scanner. Supposedly, it could detect whether any of the “miners” were secretly hiding Blue Key Stones on them.
Carrying Yuan Mu on her back, Cheng Li followed behind the crowd, looking so sleepy she could barely keep her eyes open.
Suddenly, a sharp sound rang out.
Beep!
“What happened?” Cheng Li abruptly widened her eyes.
Yuan Mu lifted his head and said calmly, “Someone probably hid a Blue Key Stone.”
Sure enough, the next second, a star pirate’s icy voice rang out.
“Are you handing it over yourself, or should I search you?”
The man’s face turned deathly pale. “I…I was wrong. I’ll hand it over right now.”
Both his hands shook like sieves. Several seconds later, he finally tremblingly pulled out a blue ore stone the size of a soybean from inside his pants.
The star pirate snatched the Blue Key Stone away and kicked the man flying with one blow. The gun barrel lifted toward him, and before he could even hit the ground, he turned into ashes midair.
“Ahhh!”
Someone screamed in terror.
“Shut up!” the star pirate barked coldly, pointing the gun toward the screamer. “Keep moving!”
Cheng Li’s body tensed. Quietly circulating her ability, she wrapped it around the Blue Key Stone.
“Don’t be afraid.” Yuan Mu’s low voice sounded beside her ear. “If there’s no Blue Key Stone on you, that machine won’t react.”
Cheng Li: “…”
That only made her more afraid, okay?
“Blue Key Stones may be valuable, but they have no special effect on healing severed limbs,” Yuan Mu added.
Surprise flashed through Cheng Li’s heart. Had Yuan Mu discovered that she was hiding a Blue Key Stone? Was he trying to persuade her now?
But for some reason, she felt that her ability could bypass the machine’s detection.
Soon, it was Cheng Li and Yuan Mu’s turn.
Keeping her expression unchanged, Cheng Li carried Yuan Mu on her back and walked through with calm, steady steps.
No alarm sounded.
Cheng Li secretly let out a sigh of relief. Being confident was one thing, but actually passing through safely was another matter entirely.
No matter what, she was now someone carrying a massive fortune on her person.
How much could a single Blue Key Stone sell for again? Fifty million star coins? Or a hundred million?
After the three of them returned to the room, they collapsed and fell into a deep sleep.
Who knew how much time had passed before Cheng Li arrived once more in that place filled with noisy withered vines, coldness, and darkness… a place no different from the netherworld itself.
“Hm? This place seems even worse than the last time I came,” Cheng Li murmured.
She didn’t know why she had come here, nor why she felt a faint ache of sympathy toward this dreadful environment.
Could this place be changed?
If this was her dream, then she should be able to change it, right?
This time, Cheng Li did not use her hands. Instead, relying on imagination and the spiritual power she had only just begun to grasp in her previous life, she tried to alter this place… or perhaps this entire world.
In the darkness, Yuan Mu’s brows were tightly furrowed. One hand clutched his head while the other grabbed at his severed limbs. His head hurt. The wounds where his legs had been hurt even more.
Worse than death!
Yuan Mu used those four words to summarize his current state.
He had clearly resolved to pull himself together and work hard to adapt to life without legs, but the reality was far harder than he had imagined.
Aside from losing both legs and having to endure endless inconvenience and waves of agonizing pain, the greatest torment came from his mental sea. It drove him to thoughts of death.
A muffled groan escaped Yuan Mu’s throat. Blood streamed from where he bit down hard on his lips.
There would be no guide here to soothe his mental sea. Rather than slowly dying from pain or going insane and losing his mind completely, it would be better to die now.
If he died, he would no longer burden her and Uncle Zhao.
Yuan Mu turned his head to look at Cheng Li two meters away.
The sky outside was gradually brightening. He could see her dirty little face, and for some reason, a trace of reluctance welled up in his heart.
But this was as far as he could go.
Yuan Mu wanted to force out a smile, but the agony twisted his features. Even biting through his tongue had become incredibly difficult.
‘Goodbye.’
Yuan Mu said the words silently, his eyes filled with both reluctance and relief.
“Mmh~”
Cheng Li suddenly made a sound, startling Yuan Mu just as he was about to bite down and end his life.
In the very next moment, the unbearable pain in his mental sea vanished instantly, replaced by a sense of ease he had never experienced before.
What was this?
A final flash of clarity before death?
He felt as though he had returned to the time before he awakened as a sentinel, when he possessed none of his extraordinary abilities and none of the burdens of a mental sea.
No… that wasn’t right.
He hadn’t bitten through his tongue.
He wasn’t dead yet.
Yuan Mu’s eyes flew open in shock. What was going on?
Meanwhile, Cheng Li’s furrowed brows relaxed. She turned over and drifted back to sleep. Finally able to sleep peacefully, she even began softly snoring.
Hearing the faint sound of her breathing, Yuan Mu gradually came back to himself. In the darkness, he silently sat up, his deep eyes sweeping across the room before landing on the doorway.
Who had soothed his mental sea?
Without even making contact, they had managed to calm his mental sea, and the effect was better than anything he had ever experienced before. Even the A-rank guides who had treated him in the past could not achieve this level.
What rank was this guide?
S-rank? Or even SS-rank?
Yuan Mu shook his head.
He had never heard of the Alliance having an SS-rank guide. It was probably an S-rank guide at most.
But nearby, there were only star pirates or people like them who had been kidnapped to mine. Guides and sentinels were kept separately in other areas under extremely tight surveillance. There should have been no way for a guide to come here.
Moreover, as far as he knew, every S-rank guide in the Alliance was placed under strict protection. It was impossible for one to appear in a place like this.
But then… how could the current situation be explained?
Yuan Mu couldn’t figure it out. His exhausted body, worn down by fatigue and drowsiness, could no longer hold on. Leaning against the wall, he slowly slid down until he was lying flat on the ground.
The next second, he fell asleep.