CH 11

The moment those black boots appeared in his sight, Ji Ning felt a chilling, dreary aura descend upon him, causing him to instinctively tremble. He could help himself from shrinking into a shivering ball of fur, clutching his tail.

Was that Ying Qianqiu… 

He didn’t dare look up at the person in front of him and was unable to tell whether they were Ying Qianqiu. He had changed too much and was no longer the boy he had been familiar with.

“Hey, there’s still someone alive here?”

A pleasant female voice sounded from the cave, and Ji Ning felt his body lift suddenly, picked up by the scruff of his neck, as a pretty face entered his vision.

The person who had picked up Ji Ning was a pretty girl, who had a pair of furry beast ears on top of her head. Her figure was wrapped in a black gauze dress that revealed a section of midriff. Her feet were bare but didn’t touch the floor, as her whole body floated slightly above the ground. 

A fluffy tail fluttered behind her, indicating her good mood. She held Ji Ning, the tiny cub, in her hand and looked at him curiously. Following her movements, the silver bells tied around her wrist made a crisp sound.

The bells and those animal ears. Could she be Yun Dao?

Seeing this string of old fashioned silver bells, Ji Ning opened his eyes involuntarily and made a soft noise. However, in the eyes of the girl, the little cub was so frightened, even the fur on its tail had puffed up.

“Despite the blood sacrifice, you haven’t been drained of life. Little guy, you’re very lucky!”

The girl touched the tip of the cub’s nose and raised him with both hands to the silver haired man, smiling, “Qianqiu, this snow beast cub isn’t dead! I can’t help but feel responsible since he’s one of my species, will you let me keep him?”

The silver haired man clothed in black carried a thick layer of ice in his eyes that had not melted for a long time. Despite her words, his expression did not change in any way. He turned and walked back into the cave’s depths saying simply, “If you wish.”

“That’s great!”

The cub’s ears trembled as she excitedly threw him up into the air. When she caught him she spoke in the language of the beasts. 

“Qianqiu has allowed me to raise you. If you listen to your older sister, in the future I can feed you a transformation pill and you can become just like older sister, how does that sound?”

Ji Ning’s soul was weak and right after entering the cub’s body he had been overwhelmed by Ying Qianqiu’s power, exhausting him further. Hearing these words he didn’t have the strength to answer and just shook his tail listlessly.

The girl pouted at his pitiful response and poked at the cub’s head, “My name is Yun Dao, what’s your name? If you don’t have a name, sister will give you one, just like A Ning gave me one…”

Her voice stopped. Seeing the loneliness on her face, Ji Ning couldn’t bear it, raising his little paw to pat the back of her hand soothingly. 

When he lived in this world, Yun Dao was a monster raised by him and Ying Qianqiu. Back then, Yun Dao had just been a little cub, as he was now. For Yun Dao, he and Ying Qianqiu were like her parents.

When he was crushed to dust he didn’t even want to think how she must have felt…

“Okay, let’s stop talking, I’ll take you to see A Ning.”

The girl smiled and carried the cub in her arms. With light steps, she followed in the direction Ying Qianqiu had disappeared to. They moved through the depths of the cave until she arrived at the altar. 

The body of the boy, formed through countless precious treasures from heaven and earth, lay quietly in its centre. Hugging the cub tightly, Yun Dao followed Ying Qianqiu step by step. Seeing the familiar face, she felt a stuffiness in her chest.

No matter how many years passed, as long as she thought about how he would never smile at her again, or gently stroke her head, her heart would clench so painfully it felt as if it was getting torn apart.

Knowing she felt this way, she couldn’t imagine what Qianqiu had gone through. Since A Ning’s death she watched Qianqiu fall to the devil's path with her own eyes. From the quiet and reserved boy of the past, to a demon king who terrified the mainland. Even the people of the Demon Sect were afraid of him.

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But only she knew that Qianqiu’s revenge was carried out in order to resurrect A Ning. Back then it had been those twelve aristocratic families who, in order to strengthen themselves, joined forces to destroy A Ning’s clan. A Ning had been murdered by then, without even leaving a corpse.

Only she knew of the deep love Qianqiu carried in his heart that had never died.

Ying Qianqiu walked up to the altar, his dark clothes fluttering behind him as he moved to sit next to the boy’s body. Without hesitating, he cut open his wrists, pouring the blood that gushed out of them into the boy’s slightly parted lips.

Yun Dao stood to the side, holding the cub in her arms, watching Ying Qianqiu’s blood flow into the boy. But his body was like a bottomless pit, no matter how much blood entered, there was no response. 

Once the flow of blood began to decrease the girl couldn’t stand it anymore and rushed over to grasp Ying Qianqiu’s hand, saying sadly, “Please stop Qianqiu, this time…we’ve failed again.”

Ying Qianqiu was silent, his bloodless hands were cold as ice, blood trickling down to his fingertips and dripping onto the boy’s wedding dress, leaving patches of deeper red.

“It’s fine…there are still three left of the twelve families, we still have a chance.”

The girl pulled at Ying Qianqiu’s sleeve, sniffed and said with red eyes, “A Ning will definitely come back…he won’t leave us behind.” 

“…”

Ji Ning hugged his tail and shrank his body into a smaller ball, trying to reduce his sense of existence, his heart almost swallowed by his feelings of guilt.

Although he had the urge to tell them he was here…he knew once the error of his current world was repaired, he would have to move on to the next world and continue with his endless missions. He would never get to see them again. How could he briefly give them hope, before snatching it away again?

So he didn’t dare make a sound, let alone have them recognise him. 

Ying Qianqiu’s pale fingers touched the jagged skin of his wrist, healing the wound in an instant and leaving only a faint red mark.

His face was ashen as he looked down at the boy’s body. After a long time, he opened his pale lips and said in a voice so soft it was barely a whisper.

“Xiaoxiao…”

Ji Ning’s family had called him this because he was the youngest child of the family line, it was a nickname of love. 

At first, Ying Qianqiu hadn’t dared call Ji Ning this way – his own family had been in decline for a long time and although the marriage contract was still in place, it was in name only. When he entered the Ji family, although he was Ji Ning’s marriage partner, he held no status at all.

Aware of his identity, he never asked for anything and didn’t dare violate the rules in any way. Unlike him, Ji Ning was the pride of the entire clan, he was a once in a lifetime cultivation genius in full bloom. When he first met Ji Ning, Ying Qianqiu hadn’t even dared to look at his face.

“Why don’t you look up? Are you so afraid of me?”

At the time he had bowed his head and stood frozen. He heard the boy’s dissatisfied scolding before his jaw was lifted, and his vision was filled with fiery red. 

The red clothed boy was high-spirited, unrestrained, and prideful. He squinted at him with a beautiful, haughty expression, as if arrogance was his birthright.

Ying Qianqiu was still a young man at the time. Faced with such a beautiful fiance, his heart was sent into a mess. It was inevitable that he would feel a little shy but on the surface he still had to abide by etiquette and bowed respectfully, saying.

“…don’t dare.”

“You say you don’t dare, what don’t you dare? Do you not dare look at me, or do you not dare be afraid of me?” 

Faced with such cautiousness, the young boy was even more irritated and walked away, “I’m so scary? The children of the side branch dare not get close to me for fear of offending me, and now even you treat me like this…”

“No…”

Ying Qianqiu panicked when the young man turned to leave, grabbing his sleeve without thinking. He felt a stutter in his heart for making such a rude action.

But unexpectedly, the young boy laughed instead of getting angry, and turned to look at Ying Qianqiu with curved eyes. 

“That’s right, you don’t have to act restrained in front of me, and you don’t have to worry about being bullied. I’ll protect you.”

Already startled, Ying Qianqiu heard the boy say, “My family calls me Xiaoxiao and everyone else calls me Ning Lang Jun. You can also call me Xiaoxiao.”

But the person he once called Xiaoxiao was no longer here.

The silver haired man’s eyes were empty as he gently lifted the boy’s body off the altar. Yun Dao followed him with the cub as they walked back through the caves. 

Lying in the girl’s arms, Ji Ning was ready to finally see the sun again after spending so much time inside the dark cave. He worried his eyes would feel uncomfortable from the bright light and was about to close them, when he saw that the sky outside the cave was dark, shadowed by a faint blood mist.

Ji Ning’s eyes widened, unprepared for such a shocking sight. They stood on the edge of a large mountain, a city at their feet, but instead of the bustling sight he had expected, there was a heavy aura of death, the city walls dyed red with blood.

The bones in the cave had only been a small proportion of the destruction. The whole mountain was piled high with the remains of both humans and beasts. Even the trees had withered, their life drained away.

In some places there were beasts, left barely alive, struggling to crawl out from the pile of corpses, fleeing in panic. Ying Qianqiu and Yun Dao did not attempt to stop them. 

“Let’s move on to the next one…”

The girl whispered softly, gazing at the devastation around her.

At this moment, Ji Ning felt an uncomfortable sickness. Curling up, he quickly fell once again into unconsciousness.

When he next opened his eyes, he found he had actually returned to the hotel room, back in Gu Chen’s world. 

“Awake?”

Herinos sat next to him with a smile. Ji Ning was dazed for a moment, the last thing he could remember was getting drunk at the celebration meal. He asked in a hoarse voice, “I’m…?”

“You got drunk last night and wouldn’t wake up. I brought you back here. Who would have thought you’d sleep until noon?”

Herinos stroked his hair and said gently, “It seems you’ve been working hard these days, it’s good you can rest now. I’ll call for lunch, what would you like to eat?” 

“…Anything.”

Ji Ning had just returned from another world and wasn’t quite sure what was going on, making his reactions a little slow. He carefully got off the bed and said, “I’ll go and wash first.”

“Okay.”

Ji Ning staggered over to the bathroom. Having learnt his lesson with Huo Wuling last time, he didn’t dare close the door and left it wide open. 

He checked the mirror carefully to make sure there was nothing unusual, before washing his face quickly. As he was drying his face, his terminal made a light beep sound, indicating that someone had sent him a message.

Ji Ning glanced at his terminal and saw it was an advertisement for a game. Usually, this kind of pop up would be filtered out by the artificial intelligence system. Perhaps the company had paid to bypass the adblocks.

He didn’t have time for games and tried to close the popup, but not only did it not exit, it opened by itself.

His terminal cast a holographic projection into the air, elegant calligraphy spelling out the name of the game: 

‘Dark Kingdom Era’

That name…wasn’t that the name of the Western Fantasy novel he once travelled through?

Ji Ning’s heart skipped a beat and he repeatedly pressed the close button of his terminal, even going so far as to remove it and force it to shut down, but it was no use. The projection still displayed in the air.

「In this wealthy and prosperous continent…」 

「Innumerable lives thrived off the lands…」

「The Demon Race, the Celestial Race, the Elves, the Dwarves, the Orcs, the Dragon Race, and the Human Race.」

「These races had their own territories and kingdoms, and lived without interfering with one another. Until one day, the king of the demons launched a savage bloody war, plunging the continent into the boundless flames of conflict.」

「Countless lives lost created countless corpses, and for a time undead magic flourished. You, a magical apprentice with a natural aptitude for soul magic, chose to become a necromancer during the war. For many years you have travelled the continent and established a grand reputation.」 

「But the endless killing made you uneasy. Despite your power, you knew that one day you would die, thus you had the idea to take on a disciple, who could take up the mantle when you are gone.」

「You took a fancy to him, a young knight from the Temple of Light, Lai.」

These lines of text flashed quickly through the air, before the figure of a young man emerged.

The boy was dressed in a valiant white knight’s uniform, his golden hair was cropped short and his blue eyes shone like gems. With a handsome face and tall figure he looked forward with a gentle smile. 

「He was the most talented magic user you had ever seen, even greater than yourself.」

「You secretly made up your mind to snatch him away from the temple, no matter the price.」

「This time, what will you choose to do?」

The protagonists are coming hard and fast now! I know I was just gushing about Ying Qianqiu, but I Lai is also one of my personal favourites as (so far) he’s the only protagonist I’ve found that acts more shameless than Herinos! 

Any time I’m even thinking of looking at novelupdates, can one of you please slap me through the screen – why do I do this to myself, I should know I’m terrible with critisism (⌒w⌒;)