“I’ll drag you into it.”
For no more than three seconds did Gu Beichen have the chance to feel pleased with himself before he heard Lin Huai’s voice.
“Why is your shadow so slow?”
Gu Beichen: …
“I’ve been waiting for ages. Why hasn’t it dragged me in yet? You’re too slow.” Lin Huai smiled at him. “Let me give you something exciting.”
The next moment, he burst into loud laughter.
The young man, wrapped in pitch black shadow, suddenly grabbed his own neck. With a motion that looked as if he were pulling himself downward, he forcefully dragged his entire body into the darkness.
His movements were swift and unpredictable. Even Gu Beichen, the one who had cast the spell, had never expected anything like it.
Gu Beichen’s hand remained suspended in midair. He stared blankly at the now empty roof of the car.
Then, from somewhere behind him, he heard a soft chuckle.
“I didn’t want to come yet you insisted on dragging me here,” Lin Huai whispered beside his ear. “So… here I am.”
At that moment, the shadow behind Gu Beichen, his own shadow, suddenly began to boil and ripple violently.
From within the shadow, something emerged.
It was another figure, deep crimson in color.
Grinning widely, the red figure raised its leg and delivered a vicious kick to Gu Beichen.
The force of the kick sent Gu Beichen flying straight into a nearby utility pole. The violent impact made his head spin and his vision blur.
While he was still clutching his head and groaning in pain, the same crimson figure suddenly emerged again from another shadow, this time from the shadow belonging to Gu Beichen himself but cast from a different direction.
“Sorry,” Lin Huai said casually. “My aim was off just now. After all… I’m blind at the moment.”
With pale fingertips, he tugged lightly at the skin beneath his right eyelid.
“See? You took away my sight.”
The crimson figure stared at him with empty, lifeless eyes. Lin Huai casually patted his cheek.
Then he laughed again.
In the next instant, he struck Gu Beichen like a soccer ball, kicking him with the elegant motion of a perfect shot toward the opposite direction.
“Bounce the ball, bounce the ball, one two three… bounce the ball…”
He seemed to be in an excellent mood. He had even stolen the line from a certain little girl ghost and was humming her childish nursery rhyme.
The blood red figure continued to emerge endlessly from the darkness of his shadow. Again and again it kicked Gu Beichen from one side to the other.
His movements were graceful, his kicks precise and powerful. Every single time, he appeared exactly at the position where Gu Beichen had just barely managed to stop.
His speed was so terrifyingly fast that Gu Beichen had no chance whatsoever to use his abilities to fight back.
The kicks left him dizzy and battered, his face swollen and bruised. His straight nose smashed hard against a rough wall and blood flowed steadily from his nostrils.
At this point he looked like a dying dog, one whose insides had already been torn apart.
Only then did Lin Huai step out from the shadow again. Without anyone noticing when it had happened, his clothes had once more turned the deep crimson of blood.
He nudged Gu Beichen’s face lightly with the tip of his shoe.
“Dead yet?” he asked.
Naturally, Gu Beichen was unable to reply.
He wheezed and gasped heavily, glaring up with bloodshot eyes.
Lin Huai crouched down.
With two slender fingers, he hooked them into the edges of Gu Beichen’s eye sockets.
“Don’t look at me like that,” he said softly. “You’ll make me want to…”
“…dig them out.”
His fingers gradually pressed harder, the sharp edges of his nails scraping lightly against Gu Beichen’s eyeballs.
Gu Beichen screamed uncontrollably.
He had no doubt that this man would truly gouge his eyes out.
Just when the pressure seemed about to reach its limit,
Lin Huai stopped.
“Kidding,” he murmured gently beside Gu Beichen’s ear.
“Your eyes aren’t some special Sharingan or anything. Even if I dug them out they’d be useless and they’d only take up space.”
With that, he stood up and casually brushed his hands together. Tilting his head slightly, he looked down at Gu Beichen.
“You’re bleeding less than that girl was… Oh. I’ve got an idea.”
His eyes narrowed happily, as if he had just thought of a wonderful plan.
“Let me give you something.”
Gu Beichen watched helplessly as Lin Huai waved his left hand through the air.
A suitcase appeared.
Lin Huai crouched down and opened it.
Inside were stacks upon stacks of green ghost money banknotes.
“Because the system warned that ‘no personal property may be carried,’ I exchanged a lot of ghost money before entering this game, just in case I needed it.”
He spoke casually as he began taking out stacks of the bills.
“Originally I planned to use them to trick people or scare them… like tossing one to a taxi driver who tried to take a longer route during a midnight ride but unexpectedly…”
He smiled.
“…they turned out to be even more useful than I imagined.”
The young man dressed in red took out all the banknotes one stack at a time, humming as he counted them before scattering them across Gu Beichen’s body.
He stood lightly on his toes as he did so.
He looked like a young boy presenting flowers to someone.
Or like a flower girl scattering petals for a bride during a wedding ceremony.
But what he scattered were green banknotes.
The entire scene was romantic, absurd and strangely beautiful, like some surreal stage play written by a heartbroken playwright high on drugs.
Zhang Mingge stared at the bizarre sight with his mouth hanging open, unable to comprehend where Lin Huai had even managed to gather such a pile of money.
Finally, Lin Huai stopped.
He bowed politely, as though finishing a magic trick.
Then he looked down at Gu Beichen and said,
“Doesn’t this pile of banknotes look like roses?”
“You!”
“Wait. Don’t speak yet.”
Lin Huai smiled with narrowed eyes.
He placed one finger gently against his lips and tilted his head slightly, putting on an almost deliberately innocent expression.
“Bang.”
By the time Chu Tianshu arrived at the scene of Lin Huai’s crime, this was the sight that greeted him.
“Take him back and eat him,” Lin Huai said.
Dressed in ragged red clothing, his empty, unfocused eyes gazed ahead as he gently stroked Yan Xi’s head.
“Eat sparingly…”
Yan Xi nodded vigorously.
Chu Tianshu: …
What kind of scene was this? A single father picking up trash with his child just to survive?
The image was so bleak it made him feel like pulling out an erhu and playing a sorrowful melody.
Then a flash of white light appeared.
Yan Xi and Gu Beichen’s corpse vanished from the scene together.
Lin Huai placed the white card back into his bag. With his vacant eyes staring into nothingness, he steadied himself against a wall and slowly stood up.
He looked pitiful and impoverished.
Seeing that there were no visible injuries on his body, Chu Tianshu let out a quiet sigh of relief.
“What happened to you?”
“I’m blind,” Lin Huai said.
“Just temporarily.” He covered his eyes briefly with one hand. “Gu Beichen’s ability, visual deprivation. My sight should come back in about an hour.”
“And that just now was…”
“My subordinate,” Lin Huai replied absentmindedly. “His ability comes from the same source as Gu Beichen’s.”
“I threw Gu Beichen to him to eat but he’ll probably need some time to digest…”
“So it really was a single father and his kid scavenging for food…”
“Hm?”
“Nothing,” Chu Tianshu said quickly. “Let me help you.”
“Mm…”
Since Lin Huai could not see the world before him, he leaned almost entirely against Chu Tianshu, relying on the sensation of contact to guide his steps.
As they walked, the two of them stumbled again and again, completely out of sync with each other.
Before long, they started arguing again about whose fault it was that they kept bumping into things.
“So obviously this is because you’re too short,” Chu Tianshu said.
“I’m one meter eighty,” Lin Huai replied coldly. “Your arms are just too short.”
“Don’t randomly add a centimeter to your height when you’re actually 179!”
After they had argued for several more steps along the road, Lin Huai, who was currently attempting to prove that rounding up meant he could legitimately claim to be one meter eighty, suddenly heard Chu Tianshu say, “This is too troublesome…”
The next moment, he felt his body suddenly lift off the ground.
“Hey, hey, don’t just pick me up without warning…” Lin Huai twisted awkwardly in his arms. “And don’t you think this position is a little…”
A little awkward…?
“It’s more convenient this way.”
“Convenient for you, maybe,” Lin Huai complained. “This position is really… too… um, gay? What kind of man gives another man a princess carry…”
The other person fell silent for a moment.
“Then should I change positions?”
“What, hey! Don’t throw me over your shoulder! That’s even stranger than before!”
“Then what do you want me to do?”
“Isn’t there any compromise between carrying someone like a sack of potatoes and doing something ridiculously gay like that…?”
Ji Fengjian, who had suffered moderate injuries and was lying nearby, slowly opened his eyes amid this noisy conversation.
With great effort, he lifted his head.
The sight that entered his vision was… extremely strange.
The brown haired young man who had entered the game together with him was standing with his back turned, looking rather troubled. Ji Fengjian couldn’t see his face but he could vaguely make out that the young man seemed to be holding someone in his arms.
From Ji Fengjian’s perspective, he could clearly see a tattered red dress draped downward from the young man’s arms.
And beneath it…
A pair of legs.
Exceptionally long and pale legs.
However.
It was a man.
A red dress. Pale legs.
And yet.
Still a man.
From any aesthetic or artistic angle, those legs were undeniably beautiful, graceful in line, straight and slender, with skin as pale as porcelain.
But they were very obviously a man’s legs.
Ji Fengjian: …
Wait, what exactly happened while I was unconscious…?
For a moment he had absolutely no idea where to begin criticizing this situation.
Perhaps his gaze was simply too bewildered. Even with Chu Tianshu’s chest blocking the way, Lin Huai still sensed the horrified stare of a straight man coming from behind him.
“I think my eyesight is coming back,” Lin Huai said. “You can put me down now.”
The moment his feet touched the ground, a shout came from behind them.
“Oh my god! Chu Tianyu, what on earth are you doing? That person wearing women’s clothing… isn’t that a man?!”
Lin Huai: …
The exaggerated shock in the man’s voice made him feel personally insulted.
He turned around.
When Ji Fengjian saw his face clearly, he felt even more faint.
“What’s wrong with being a man?” Lin Huai raised his eyebrows sharply. “Can’t men wear women’s clothing?”
Although cross dressing wasn’t exactly Lin Huai’s personal hobby, the fact remained that he was currently wearing women’s clothing. In his own mind, he regarded it merely as a normal action done to complete a task.
Still, professionalism mattered.
Since he was already dressed like this, Lin Huai felt obligated to defend his position and launched a counterattack against Ji Fengjian.
“A… A man wearing women’s clothes is just perverted behavior!” Ji Fengjian cried out in despair.
Lin Huai: …
Ji Fengjian watched helplessly as the handsome young man’s expression instantly darkened.
Standing beside him, Chu Tianshu burst into uncontrollable laughter.
“Hahahahaha…”
“Shut up,” Lin Huai said coldly.
Chu Tianshu raised an eyebrow and made a gesture as if zipping his lips shut.
Ji Fengjian clearly hadn’t expected that the raggedly dressed cross dressing person standing before him would actually be the “Tomie like” character in this dungeon instance.
He was about to say something else when he suddenly noticed the young man curl his lips into a faint smile, as though he had just thought of something.
Then Lin Huai pinched the collar of his own clothes between his fingers and slowly walked toward him step by step.
“Now that I think about it,” Lin Huai said lightly, “the clothes I’m wearing are already torn beyond repair. So perhaps…”
Ji Fengjian: ?
The young man crouched down.
He reached out and grabbed Ji Fengjian’s chin.
When that beautiful face leaned closer, Ji Fengjian inexplicably failed to dodge.
“Y… you… you…” he stammered. “W.. what are you trying to do? What are you planning to- ”
His heart suddenly raced uncontrollably.
Then he was gently…
Slapped across the face.
✦ ✧ ✦
Cresvynia
[Translator]
☕ A LITTLE SOMETHING FOR THE TRANSLATOR
✦ A tiny offering to the translator may please the spirits of the Realm. ☕
☕ BUY THEM A COFFEE →
✧ (づ｡•ㅅ•｡)づ ☕ ✧
✦ thank you for reading ✦
← PreviousNext →
ChaptersChapter 111 · Although the author really didn’t want to writeChapter 112 · An explanation of the main storylineChapter 113 · Lin Huai’s QuestionChapter 114 · Hello classmateChapter 115 · Let me introduce the protagonist’s family backgroundChapter 116 · The innocent and naive Lin XiaohuaiChapter 117 · The Trisolarans ArriveChapter 118 · He Isn’t Fighting AloneChapter 119 · Why Here?Chapter 120 · A World Where Everyone Is Sculpted in ClayChapter 121 · How Could It Be YouChapter 122 · I want to sell my carChapter 123 · The Mysterious Transfer StudentsChapter 124 · Gu BeichenChapter 125 · The Male Lead of This StoryChapter 126 · A Voice Never Heard BeforeChapter 127 · You’re Tomie, aren’t you?Chapter 128 · I’ll give youChapter 129 · I just want to be with youChapter 130 · The Principal’s OfficeChapter 131 · Chu: I Disbanded Your Hate GroupsChapter 132 · Speak ProperlyChapter 133 · A Trisolaran Enters the Grand View GardenChapter 134 · Ji FengjianChapter 135 · About Me and YouChapter 136 · Kayako Likes ItChapter 137 · YouChapter 138 · I’ll Beat MyselfChapter 139 · I Want to See MyselfChapter 140 · The Trisolarans’ First Experience of Love and SexChapter 141 · The Trisolarans Try Romance Once MoreChapter 142 · The Trisolarans Try Romance for the Third TimeChapter 143 · It’s All This Buff’s FaultChapter 144 · The Way You Straight Men TalkChapter 145 · Why are you taking it so seriously?Chapter 146 · Chu Tianshu Shows Off His MusclesChapter 147 · Enter the DreamChapter 148 · Leave a little secretChapter 149 · Shadow StreamerChapter 150 · Don’t Look at MeChapter 151 · The Trisolarans betrayed StalinChapter 152 · Then I WillChapter 153 · The Trisolarans rewrite the Book of Life and DeathChapter 154 · What Career Could Be More Important Than Your Wife?Chapter 155 · Aren’t We Already Together?Chapter 156 · MVP of the Entire FieldChapter 157 · Meeting the FamilyChapter 158 · A Phone Call Across Time and SpaceChapter 159 · Lu Jin, You’re So MiserableChapter 160 · The Lands Of DaughtersChapter 161 · The So Called Pregnancy StreamChapter 162 · The Street Where Only the Two of Us ExistChapter 163 · No bare faceChapter 164 · Question 1: Do you have hair loss?Chapter 165 · LaxativesChapter 166 · Where Exactly Do You Exist?Chapter 167 · Seven ZeroChapter 168 · The issue of 0 and 1Chapter 169 · Wind ChimeChapter 170 · Visa and Wind ChimesChapter 171 · Continue to persecute Lu JinChapter 172 · Examiner: I’ve fallen in love with himChapter 173 · Lin Huai intimidates scalpersChapter 174 · Night of EvilChapter 175 · Congratulations to the Male Guests on Successfully Finding Their PartnersChapter 176 · Before ThisChapter 177 · The gong says he is terrifiedChapter 178 · The Tasker CampChapter 179 · I’m So ScaredChapter 180 · The Final Transitional ChapterChapter 181 · Four Beauties Among the FlowersChapter 182 · Plum FragranceChapter 183 · Dry Weather and Flammable ThingsChapter 184 · The Heartless Sword ManualChapter 185 · Only MeChapter 186 · The North PoleChapter 187 · Let Brother Lin Learn to Meow Like a CatChapter 188 · Good Night