TSMITB Chapter49

The confusion and distress in Shen Que’s eyes hadn’t been withdrawn yet when Sheng Qixiao took them all in. “Are you feeling sorry for me?”

“I just wanted to say, this is not a reason for you to forcibly keep me here.” Shen Que didn’t deny it but turned his head to avoid his hand. “How are you any different from those who harmed you for their own selfish desires with the way you’re acting?”

“Shen Que, I didn’t tell you all this to gain your sympathy; I told you because you wanted to know.” Sheng Qixiao defended himself, his voice fluctuating much more than when he recounted his tragic past. “I’m no different from them, but how are you any different, from those outsiders who tricked the tribesmen?”

Shen Que frowned in disagreement. He originally didn’t want to argue with Sheng Qixiao at this time; the confusing information was still crashing around in his mind, and he hadn’t had time to fully process it yet.

“There’s no difference? Does that make us even? We both made mistakes, but mistakes shouldn’t be canceled out by each other, they should be corrected immediately.” Shen Que’s conviction weakened as he spoke. “I did want to use you before. It was my mistake, and I apologize to you.”

“Your words are always very reasonable,” Sheng Qixiao mimicked him by turning his face away. “But I don’t want to accept it. If we are to correct our mistakes, you need to return what Old Qiu and the others took outside. That is the prerequisite for both of us correcting ourselves.”

“……” Shen Que choked for a moment, and an inexplicable surge of annoyance rose in his expression. “Then is your ‘liking’ me putting me in danger? You can’t even protect yourself; I won’t even know how I died.”

“I’m sorry.” Sheng Qixiao apologized quickly and very sincerely. “I will definitely protect you in the future. Right now, they wouldn’t dare do anything to you.”

“Oh really? But you can’t even protect yourself.” Shen Que grabbed Sheng Qixiao’s wrist, placing the obvious scar right in front of the two of them.

“……” Sheng Qixiao bit his lip, deeply realizing that one shouldn’t lie too much. The excuse he used to cover up his previous lies had become a fatal vulnerability that put him at a disadvantage in this negotiation.

He was silent for a moment, then simply gave up and said with reckless abandon, “Shen Que, you really don’t feel sorry for me at all.”

“Didn’t you say you weren’t trying to gain my sympathy by telling me all this?”

“…I regret it now. Even if you don’t like me, at least pity me.” Before he finished speaking, Sheng Qixiao completely disregarded the situation and rushed forward to hug him tightly with an irresistible force.

Shen Que had absolutely no defense against Sheng Qixiao’s newly-acquired tactic of whining and clinging, “Where did you learn to act so unreasonably?”

Sheng Qixiao didn’t speak, but a flush crept onto the tips of his ears after a long absence. He couldn’t exactly say he picked it up from many different sources, could he?

He had previously scoffed at those little beauties who constantly tried to charm Shen Que with whining, but now he found it quite effective to use himself.

Seeing that he didn’t speak, Shen Que didn’t mind either. “Then how did you later break free from their clutches and turn the situation around?”

“It’s a secret. You’ll know later.” Sheng Qixiao shook his head, still trying to feign weakness, “I talked a lot today, I’m a little tired.”

Shen Que knew he was faking it but was too lazy to expose him. He even felt a little fortunate, thinking that Sheng Qixiao acting like a “green tea” (feigning innocence/vulnerability) was better than him acting crazy.

“I have one more question. Those elders…”

“I don’t know how long they’ve lived either. They drank the blood of the Spirit of Nature, and later they drank mine too.” He sighed, his tone somewhat resentful, “My blood is considered precious. They all want it, yet you don’t.”

“Because I’m not a pervert…” Shen Que was speechless. His moral bottom line might be low, but he was a law-abiding citizen and was far from seeing the flesh and blood of his own kind as reserve food. “I remember you said before that you don’t raise Gu?”

“I didn’t lie to you about that.”

He didn’t raise Gu, but every Gu insect later flowed with his blood, feeding on his bone and blood.

Shen Que still had many questions in his heart, but he didn’t voice them out.

Sheng Qixiao’s past was a bloody and horrifying dark abyss. He could understand his desire to firmly hold onto something he loved.

He understood, but he could not accept it.

He was not an inanimate object without thought.

The two fell silent, listening to their still-unsteady breathing and mismatched heartbeats as they quietly sorted through their respective thoughts.

Over the next few days, Shen Que’s attitude toward Sheng Qixiao was exceptionally peaceful, even what one might call gentle.

“Does this count as maximizing the benefit?” Sheng Qixiao asked Ke Di, half-boasting, half-asking for advice.

Ke Di chuckled twice, “Why wouldn’t it count?”

The rainy season officially arrived. Taking advantage of the relatively light rain, Sheng Qixiao took Shen Que to the forest to pick fresh small mushrooms.

Dead leaves accumulated in the dense forest. All kinds of oddly shaped mushrooms popped up under the nourishment of the rainwater.

Sheng Qixiao and Shen Que each carried a small bamboo basket while maintaining a not-too-close, not-too-distant separation, searching for their respective “dream mushrooms.”

Shen Que automatically ignored the brightly colored mushrooms. The more beautiful something was, the more dangerous it could be; a principle that had been thoroughly proven in Sheng Qixiao’s case.

Therefore, he specifically chose those “honest mushrooms” that looked ugly and had dull colors, and soon filled a whole basket.

Shen Que straightened up, raised his chin toward Sheng Qixiao, who had only gathered half a basket, lifted an eyebrow slightly, and clicked his tongue as he shook his head. “Looks like some people’s eyesight isn’t very good, you’ve only picked this little bit?”

Sheng Qixiao turned around upon hearing this. Raindrops dripped down his brow bone and eyelashes. In the scene fragmented by the rain, Shen Que’s vivid, proud look was exceptionally clear.

The corner of his mouth unconsciously lifted by ten pixels as laughter spilled from his throat. Sheng Qixiao took two steps forward, stood side-by-side with Shen Que, and looked down at the mushrooms in the small basket. His compliment almost died on his lips, “…You really picked them very fast.”

As he spoke, he bent down and reached into Shen Que’s basket to pick out the poisonous mushrooms. The dusty ones, those with black-curled edges, and those with wormholes were all the ugly mushrooms Shen Que had carefully selected. In a short while, he threw out more than half, leaving only two ordinary-looking mushrooms with light brown caps pitifully resting at the bottom of the basket.

“?” Shen Que nudged him away, protecting the pitiful mushrooms scattered on the ground. “What are you doing! Are you jealous that I picked more than you?”

Sheng Qixiao picked up a twisted, ugly mushroom. With a slight pressure of his fingers, dark black liquid oozed out. “All the ones I threw out are poisonous. Why did you specifically pick poisonous ones?”

“……” Shen Que was somewhat speechless.

As if knowing why he specifically picked the ugly ones, Sheng Qixiao advised him, “Ugly things aren’t necessarily safe either.”

Shen Que thought about it, and realized he was right.

Those ugly, old elders who should have been buried long ago are indeed the most disgusting and venomous existences.

On the way back, Shen Que still stubbornly looked around for mushrooms. To only bring back two after finally coming out felt too embarrassing.

Finally, in a patch of dense grass, he saw a milky-white mushroom. Its cap was round like an umbrella held by a small insect in the rain. It was neither ugly nor beautiful and looked very safe. Without thinking, he immediately reached out to pick it.

Just as his fingertips were about to touch the mushroom, a gaudy snake darted out of the grass without warning. It opened its mouth wide, revealing sharp fangs, and launched forward like lightning, heading straight for Shen Que’s face.

Shen Que’s breath hitched. He had no time to dodge and thought he was going to die right there.

But the expected pain did not come. When he turned his head, it was Sheng Qixiao who had blocked it for him.

The ugly, green and yellow snake was thrown far away. It wriggled a few times on the ground and soon became motionless.

Two deep bloody holes appeared on Sheng Qixiao’s arm. Dark black blood dripped continuously, mixing with the rainwater to form a small puddle on the ground.

“Sheng Qixiao!” Shen Que immediately panicked. He remembered how Gang Zi had been instantly paralyzed and unable to speak clearly after being bitten by a snake in the forest before. Fear and guilt enveloped him. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know there was a snake there… Let me help you…”

Sheng Qixiao, however, was completely unconcerned. He raised his hand to block Shen Que’s forehead, stopping his frantic movements, and his tone was soothing, “It’s fine, don’t worry. No poison works on me.”

Shen Que froze for a moment. It took him a while to fully grasp the meaning of that sentence.

The comforting words, on the contrary, made him feel as if he had fallen into an ice cellar.

Previously, in order to sneak into the temple at night to steal the Gu, Gang Zi had told him to drug Sheng Qixiao.

But the sleeping pill had somehow turned into an aphrodisiac, resulting in Sheng Qixiao tormenting him for almost the entire night.

He had originally thought the situation occurred because the medicine conflicted with something else, but now it seemed…

Sheng Qixiao had known all along about their entire plan but didn’t stop them, watching them foolishly jump into the trap. Even after taking advantage of him, he feigned innocence and even ordered Shen Que to braid his hair.

Shen Que fell silent, his entire body enveloped by a biting cold. He watched the holes on Sheng Qixiao’s arm rapidly healing and scabbing over at a visible rate, and he couldn’t utter another word.

He kept forgetting, time and time again, that the person in front of him was not some harmless, pure white flower, but a man-eating flower dressed in a gorgeous coat, emitting an alluring fragrance.

That’s why he was repeatedly manipulated by him. And now, as the facade of peace and normalcy crumbled, he was met with a chill colder than the last.

Shen Que staggered to his feet, desperately controlling his facial expression, “Let’s go back quickly, the rain is getting heavier.”

The person before him was powerful and unfathomable.

All trust and warmth were fake cages.

Even his attempt to disclose his past suffering to himself was merely a calculated move to elicit care and maintain a superficial harmony.

Leave, leave, leave!

These two words once again clearly filled Shen Que’s mind.

This rain lasted for many days like countless clocks ticking away the time.

It stretched from outside the window into Shen Que’s dreams.

A clear sky instantly became overcast. Shen Que stood among the mountains while watching large clumps of dark clouds press down heavily.

A beautiful yet powerful hand appeared out of thin air beside him. The owner of the hand was also beautiful, showing him a warm smile, and said he would take him to a safe place.

The next moment, that hand transformed into a snake’s tail. Its scales shone with an eerie cold light. It wrapped tightly around him without question, coiling tighter and tighter, its venomous fangs pressing against his pulse, inching deeper.

“No!”

Shen Que woke up from his dream, drenched in sweat.

Sheng Qixiao hadn’t even opened his eyes, but his arm instinctively circled around him, pulling him into an embrace, lightly patting his back comfortingly, “Are you having a nightmare?”

Shen Que stiffened in his arms, simply allowing him to do so without resisting or saying a word.

He had been having nightmares frequently during this period.

Dreaming of Silver Moon Valley, dreaming of the Moon Glazing Festival, dreaming of the dying Shen Yi in the hospital bed.

“Sheng Qixiao, tell me, are my family members better now?”

Sheng Qixiao still had his eyes closed. His fingers ran through Shen Que’s soft hair, intermittently smoothing it out. His blurred answer was half a beat late. His breathing gradually became even and steady, and he drowsily fell back asleep.

Shen Que carefully and slowly pushed Sheng Qixiao’s hand away, withdrew from his embrace, pulled back the quilt, and got out of bed.

He stood silently at the foot of the bed for a long while, his gaze lingering heavily on the sleeping figure beneath the quilt. The darkness blurred Sheng Qixiao’s face, but Shen Que saw it very clearly.

That face was flawlessly beautiful. Coupled with carefully crafted expressions, it offered him so much false tenderness that he almost truly became addicted to it.

The door to the small herbal room on the third floor was closed but not locked. Shen Que gave it a gentle push, and the door opened with a creak.

On the side opposite the door, a skylight was open on the roof. Climbing out of the skylight, one could see a chain connecting the roof beam to the mountain face opposite, though its destination was unknown.

A wooden ladder was originally stored in the corner beneath the skylight, but Sheng Qixiao had put it away later, and Shen Que hadn’t been able to find it despite searching for a long time.

A few days ago, when the small building leaked, Sheng Qixiao had to fix the roof, and that ladder was brought out again. At this moment, it was resting horizontally beside the low wall of the third-floor balcony.

Shen Que quietly moved the ladder into the small herbal room, propped it under the skylight, and climbed up step by step.