Lu Jingxing walked closer and looked down at the fabric on the other’s body once white, now stained gray and nearly in tatters and could faintly make out streaks of bruising on the exposed skin.
Even so, those unblemished, lightly sand-dusted pale hands and slender knuckles were so beautiful they inspired envy.
As if they had been sculpted from the purest handful of mountain snow on some far northern peak, bathed in sunlight day and night.
It took Lu Jingxing a good while to tear his gaze away. He crouched down to examine the complex wounds on the man’s body. The person was lying face-down on the ground, but his lower legs were a gruesome, filthy mess of mangled flesh and fabric, so much so that the ground around them had been soaked, the gushing dark red a shocking sight.
His lower legs had been crushed off by something.
It was hard to imagine how such cruel misfortune could have befallen this person after all, this was the embodiment of a god.
Lu Jingxing sighed inwardly, thinking with some headache about how to carry the man away in as gentle a manner as possible without aggravating his injuries.
The butterfly man who had come along with him strolled leisurely at his side, seemingly somewhat interested in the “torture more interesting than what humans do” that Lu Jingxing was about to perform, watching quietly from the side.
Lu Jingxing hesitated for a long moment, then reached out his hand, the instant he was about to touch the other’s body, he suddenly heard an arrogant voice, somewhere between a young man’s and a boy’s, ring out nearby:
“There’s a decent slave over there. I want him.”
The blond young man regained a bit of consciousness.
The pain radiating from every part of his body seized his entire attention, and the most prominent of it was from his knees down to his calves… he could barely feel his legs at all anymore.
He tried moving his body and realized he was currently being held up, the point of support somewhere around his waist quite stable, yet cold.
He instinctively lifted his chin, wanting to see his current situation clearly, and his long, slightly curled golden hair fell back from his neck, revealing a softly contoured jaw.
Feeling the movement of the person in his arms, Lu Jingxing looked down and was caught off guard, crashing straight into that beauty,
“God traced this vessel from the white clouds encircling the holy mountain, took a wisp of morning light for his hair, sculpted the bridge of his nose from the most perilous peaks along the holy mountain’s ridge, then picked up a pink rose at hand to dye his lips, and finally, God drew out a rib and placed it inside this body…”
“The moment this incarnation opened his eyes, the purest light in the world was reflected in them, and because he was born of light, no darkness could ever approach him.”
Seeing the sunlight dancing on the eyelashes of the person in his arms, Lu Jingxing forced his gaze away with difficulty, discovering that the bizarre Mary Sue descriptions in the original text were, in fact, fucking real.
“Who are you?” The pleasant voice in his arms interrupted his musings.
Lu Jingxing glanced at the butterfly man beside him and said offhandedly, “You don’t need to know.”
Seeing that the little psychopath’s group was about to catch up, he looked at the butterfly man and belatedly remembered that this person’s identity was the original owner’s butler, so he gave a slight lift of his chin.
The butler bowed slightly to him, right hand clenched in a fist over his left chest, the markings on his face flickering faintly:
“At your service. Leave the boring people here to me you need only enjoy yourself to your heart’s content.”
Lu Jingxing was baffled by the sticky, suggestive undertone in his words, not quite understanding, until he noticed the man’s gaze fixed on the male lead he was currently holding, accompanied by an unmistakably lewd smile.
Thinking of just how much of a “prized catch” the male lead was in the original story…
Lu Jingxing could guess the garbage going through the other’s mind. He fell silent for a moment, then carried the man toward the carriage that had now been disguised as an ordinary one, as if he really did intend to go do something strange. Inside the carriage.
The several ornaments that had been lively and noisy just moments ago were now trembling in a corner, the clattering bones huddling up against the furnace, the bloodstained blanket rolling itself into a ball and burrowing desperately under the seat…
And the source of their terror was the male lead Lu Jingxing had just carried back.
Lu Jingxing thought about it briefly and understood. In the original story, the male lead hadn’t been persecuted directly by the dark forces at first rather, it was from the human side that things began, and only after his fall did these demons get to do as they pleased with him.
So the incarnation of a god had an initial effect of warding off evil. Good.
An inexplicable sense of relief washed over him. He carefully laid the man down on the carriage cushions, trying his best not to touch his wounds…
After much fussing, he found himself meeting a pair of golden eyes that gleamed even in the dim light.
Lu Jingxing belatedly went, uh… had he hurt him?
Not immediately figuring out how to express concern in a cold manner, he paused before asking, “You’re injured. Do you remember what happened before?”
The pale golden eyes were like glass, still fixed in his direction, unblinking for a long while thinking, perhaps, or somewhat vacant.
After a long time, Lu Jingxing heard him say slowly, “I can’t remember…”
His pale brows knitted, as if even thinking was an effort for him. His trailing voice hung in the air for a long moment before he added, “I only remember my name. Samuel… everything else is gone.”
As he spoke, he only stared fixedly in one direction. Lu Jingxing found it rather strange, and suddenly something occurred to him. He reached out and waved a hand, there was no reaction at all from the man’s eyes.
His heart sank. Sure enough, the male lead wasn’t just crippled he was blind too. The story’s opening hadn’t changed one bit.
If he’d been taken back by that little pervert earlier, the male lead would have lacked any awareness of the danger he was in for a long stretch of time. Even if the other constantly waved needles and thread around in front of him, he probably wouldn’t have felt a thing.
Lu Jingxing shuddered at the thought. Just then, he heard Samuel ask softly, “Do you know me?”
He was about to answer when he suddenly felt a chill at his back, a creeping coldness flowing into his ears along with the newcomer’s voice:
“You seem to be in a good mood today to have the leisure to chat with a lamb about to be served up on the dinner table.”
The silent malice was not blurred by the laughter in that soft tone. Lu Jingxing realized with horror how close the two of them now were he hadn’t even noticed when the other had returned.
His nerves snapped taut in an instant. Expressionless, he dragged the shadow-light figure out from behind him and said offhandedly:
“Is it taken care of?”
“Of course. It was your order, how could I dare be negligent?” The man bent down in the low space, right fist placed over his chest in a bow, looking for all the world quite obedient.
Lu Jingxing glanced casually outside. The crowd out there showed no signs of commotion, and he relaxed.
The black-haired man with the center part lifted his head slightly and looked over at Samuel beside them, asking with great interest:
“And what do you intend to do with him?”
Lu Jingxing carefully weighed his words: “Let’s treat those wounds first.”
The man’s face flickered with a moment of bewilderment, as if he doubted his own hearing: “…What?”
He glanced over the blond avatar of the god, and a thought seemed to occur to him. He offered a suggestion: “If you’re worried that he’s in no condition to be handled in this state, that’s truly an unnecessary concern.”
“After all, he’s that one’s… his constitution should be extraordinary. And now that he’s lost his memory, it’s actually convenient you only need to be careful not to kill him.”
Lu Jingxing: “…” Could we do something that a normal human being would do?
In the blank space of his silence, the butler assumed he was afraid of using too much force and misjudging his own strength, so he gently switched to the demonic tongue to reassure him:
“Rest assured, with that one down in Hell, even if you really did kill him, it wouldn’t cause any major trouble.”
Lu Jingxing:
Lu Jingxing: I didn’t! I’m not! Don’t make things up!
Watching the male lead listening to their conversation, awake and silent, Lu Jingxing plastered his heart with crying-cat memes.
It’s over. I can never clear my name now.
But he’d already saved the man…
Lu Jingxing’s soul trembled as he heard himself join in the perversion: “I like prey that struggles. A motionless dead fish that just takes whatever comes far too boring.”
The butler pondered for a moment, seeming to find this quite agreeable, and with a smile he snapped his fingers:
“I understand your meaning, my lord.”
Lu Jingxing: No, I don’t think you understand!
He screamed internally, but all he saw was a swirl of smoke, the butler and the blond beauty vanished before his eyes, and the carriage drove itself onward. …
Lu Jingxing was dropped off at the entrance of a small, resplendent castle.
His mind was still on the male lead’s situation, and he had no interest in admiring how remarkable the castle was. Just as he was searching his memories for a way to contact the butler, the door opened by itself before him.
The black-haired butler, hair parted down the middle, bowed to him: “Welcome back.”
“…”
Sensing his poor mood, the man smiled: “Your instructions have been carried out please, follow me.”
Lu Jingxing, recalling how demons’ minds worked, had a rather bad premonition.
That premonition peaked when he stepped into an ornately carved room.
A grand Rococo-style bed stood before him, and the blond male lead the one with the broken leg, covered in filth just that day had at some point already been cleaned up spotless; there was even a pleasant fragrance drifting through the air.
Lu Jingxing stepped a little closer, and through the layers of thin gauze curtains, he saw a flushed face. Beautiful golden eyes were covered by a slender silk ribbon, and only the red lips seemed even more vivid than in the daytime.
“!”
He swore he could hear a faint, strange sound…
The butler smiled at him as if claiming credit: “His wounds have already healed. For your enjoyment a tiny bit of illusion. You wouldn’t mind, surely?”
Lu Jingxing: “…” Just kill me now.
As if that weren’t enough, the butler courteously made a “please” gesture, his entire body radiating impatient urging.