CH 19

After sending Lai away, no further plots were triggered and Ji Ning was left with nothing to do. He was already very tired, so he simply lay down to rest and quickly entered a deep sleep.

When he woke again, he found he had quit the game and was back inside the hospital ward, lying on his bed. 

The sky was bright outside, he must have unknowingly left the game in his sleep and slept peacefully in the ward all night.

When the medical robot on standby saw him wake up, it brought Ji Ning breakfast and notified a doctor that he was awake.

After Ji Ning finished his breakfast, the doctor confirmed that he was fit to be discharged from the hospital at any time. He left the hospital in the car sent by the Ji family. Since his own villa had been destroyed, he chose to return to the villa where the rest of his family lived.

On his way home, Ji Ning checked his terminal. A notification confirmed that he had quit the game along with the message, ‘Please look forward to unlocking more events and options.’ Other than the notice, the game had left no traces on his terminal and there was no way to determine how it had been hacked. 

Even though his instincts told him it wouldn’t work, Ji Ning stopped on his way back to buy a new terminal. With a bit of luck, maybe he would never see that damned game again.

After returning to the Ji family house, Ji Ning finally had a rare day of rest. There were no protagonists clinging to his side, he only chatted a little with Gu Chen on his terminal, and he was able to enjoy a leisurely break.

But Ji Ning had always been a diligent worker. Although he was supposed to be resting, he constantly worried about whether the teenagers from the twelve aristocratic families had refined Qin Ruwang’s body. He was also a little concerned that Herinos was still missing.

Was there ever such a conscientious transmigrator as him? He even included an after-sale service. The system operator should really give him a model worker bonus.

Muttering this, Ji Ning finally reached the two day minimum rest he had to take before Future would let him transfer his soul back to Ying Qianqiu’s world.

After a slight discomfort, the light that filled Ji Ning’s vision dimmed and he was left in pitch darkness. He was still trapped inside Yun Dao’s beast bag.

He had no idea what was going on outside.

Ji Ning pressed his fluffy ears against the wall of the bag to listen for sounds, but he couldn’t hear anything. 

However, not long after a beam of light shone into the beast bag as a slit at the top opened up. Ji Ning didn’t know if Yun Dao had planned to let him out, but took the opportunity to escape from the bag.

Taking a quick look around, he guessed he was inside Qin Ruwang’s mausoleum. He appeared to be deep inside the mountain, with only a few brass lamps emitting faint light down the long and narrow corridor. At regular intervals, there were small doors on either side of the corridor, connecting to a large number of tombs.

But where was Yun Dao? There was no way she would have left him…

At first glance, Ji Ning couldn’t see the beast girl, but when his eyes swept across the open door of the tomb facing him, his heart skipped a beat, anxiety filling his eyes. 

The girl in the tomb was injured, her dishevelled clothes stained with blood. Yun Dao’s eyes were closed and she seemed to be unconscious, the storage bag she had been carrying was shattered and its contents scattered across the floor.

What happened here? Who hurt her?

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However, even if he wanted to give Yun Dao medicine, Ji Ning was powerless to do so. He was still in the form of a cub. Not to mention opening her mouth and helping her swallow, he couldn’t even open the bottle.

Ji Ning moved to cuddle against the girl’s body again, but still couldn’t wake her up.

There was a sudden noise of movements outside, as if something was approaching them. At this point it was impossible to distinguish whether they were an enemy or a friend, but anything that appeared in this place was unlikely to be good. 

What should he do…

He turned around so quickly that he almost bit the tip of his tail. He knew what he had to do to save Yun Dao.

After a little searching, Ji Ning found a delicate box. With some difficulty, he bit away the box’s lock, revealing the medicine inside. It was the Huaxing pill the girl had bought for him.

Ji Ning had been the one to give Yun Dao her transformation pill back then and knew that eating just a small amount of the pill would still transform him, but only for a very short period of time. 

This perfectly suited Ji Ning’s current situation. He could help the unconscious Yun Dao without accidentally revealing his identity.

Making a quick decision, he bit down on a corner of the Huaxing pill. Usually, ingesting the whole pill would take a long time to take effect, as it gradually transformed the individual’s body so that they could freely switch between human and beast form. As Ji Ning only ate a small amount, it would only temporarily make him human before he changed back to beast, therefore he immediately turned into a slender human boy.

His snow white fur melded into a simple white daopao. He couldn’t tell whether his face remained the same and had no way to confirm it for now, but he guessed that even if he didn’t look identical, he would look similar enough.

But that wasn’t important for now. He quickly found the medicine bottle and sniffed it, to check that it was the same wound medicine he remembered. After verifying it was the same, he picked up Yun Dao and poured the medicine into her mouth. As soon as she swallowed it, he breathed a sigh of relief. 

His next step was to find Ruwang’s coffin and find out who hurt Yun Dao.

Ji Ning let the girl’s head rest in his lap as he looked out the door, thinking about which direction to go. He didn’t notice how quickly the healing tonic had worked, as the colour returned to Yun Dao’s face and she slowly opened her eyes.

“Ah..A-Ning?”

She called out in a daze, startling Ji Ning. As expected, he had retained his original appearance that he didn’t want to show to her. 

“A-Ning…is that you? Is that really you?”

Yun Dao’s vision was blurred but she blinked desperately to try and better see the boy holding her. She was too familiar with that face, even if she couldn’t see clearly she was certain it was A-Ning in front of her.

“A…A-Ning, is it you? Please answer me, say something to me…”

Her eyes reddened, spilling over with tears as she desperately struggled to sit up, but due to the sudden movement as well as the overexertion right as her injuries were healing, she fainted. Her outstretched hand faintly brushed against Ji Ning’s sleeve before it fell down weakly. 

Seeing her so excited, Ji Ning couldn’t bear it. No matter how much he wanted to reveal his identity, as soon as the system fixed the world merging he would never be able to see her again. The more hope he gave her now, the crueller it would feel to leave again in the future.

He had to let Yun Dao believe it was just an illusion…

Ji Ning put her down as gently as he could and checked her scattered items to see if any of them could be used to temporarily protect her. To his dismay, almost all of the useful items could only be activated using qi.

The voices from outside the tomb moved closer and closer. Ji Ning could hear several different sets of footsteps running towards them and a voice yelled, “Go faster,” as if they were being chased by something. 

They were the children from the twelve families who came to rob Qin Ruwang’s grave…

Ji Ning recognised their voices and decided not to save them. Firstly, he couldn’t forgive them for what they intended to do to Qin Ruwang. Secondly, he wasn’t certain he could protect himself and Yun Dao for the moment, nevermind other people.

He closed the door of the burial chamber and moved Yun Dao to its innermost corner, sprinkling aura removing powder from Yun Dao’s bag around them. Hopefully, no one outside would realise there were still people hiding inside the tomb.

The sound of running from the corridor moved closer until Ji Ning could hear the rough breathing of the teenagers right outside the door. He couldn’t tell how long they had been running for. 

“No…no, I really can’t run anymore. Let’s hide for a bit or I’ll die of exhaustion before I’m killed by that corpse.”

“You useless idiot, do you think the corpse won’t be able to find you? Hiding would just be asking to get killed!”

“I don’t care, you keep running then, I’m going to hide.”

The voices continued arguing outside until one of them angrily pushed the tomb door open and was met with a pair of eyes staring at him from inside. 

Ji Ning, who hadn’t expected them to suddenly open the door, was speechless.

“Argh!”

The boy was so frightened he fell to the floor and the other teens felt their hearts chill, thinking the monster had caught up with them again. But upon closer inspection, the beautiful boy inside the tomb was the same age as them, and was clearly full of blood and internal energy. Alive, he was obviously alive.

“Who are you?” 

Even if he was alive, the teenagers couldn’t help but feel surprised. After all, finding a living person inside the mausoleum of the dead was more unexpected than seeing a corpse.

Before the unfamiliar boy could answer, the speaker saw the girl that lay beside him and his face twisted as he shouted, “You’re with that demon girl!”

It was all thanks to that demon girl that they were reduced to being hunted by the murderous corpse. Originally they had been fully prepared, entering the underground palace and prying open the coffin to steal the body of Qin Ruwang, the Emperor of Xia. Qilang refined his body using the secret corpse techniques of the Xiao family and successfully woken him up.

Everything had gone smoothly but halfway through the process, the demon girl appeared, killing Qilang and snatching the corpse from them. 

They were no match for her, so in a desperate attempt to reverse the situation they used a forbidden spell to increase the power of the refined corpse and succeeded in wounding the demon girl. However, they completely lost control of the refined corpse and it changed into a murderous corpse, chasing them all the way here and picking them off, one by one.

Almost all the magic treasures they had brought with them had been used up, and their precious family techniques had been abandoned when they first had to escape. All of this was because of that demon girl. Seeing her again, they really wished they could kill her immediately.

Several of the teens glared resentfully, but as the sound of approaching footsteps got louder, they began to panic again.

“Are you that demon girl’s assistant?” 

In desperation, one boy tried to coax Ji Ning, “Don’t bother saving her, she’s beyond saving. You haven’t seen how powerful that murderous corpse is, why don’t you throw her body out to divert his attention, then you can escape with us!”

They hadn’t pushed Ji Ning out to die immediately because they couldn’t guess Ji Ning’s strength. In such dangerous circumstances it would be foolish to make another enemy. Ji Ning could guess what they were thinking and was unimpressed. Instead, he briefly considered forcing them out of the tomb, so they could lure the corpse away themselves.

The footsteps suddenly burst forward and reached the door of the tomb, an ice sword slashing through the entranceway, causing the frightened teenagers to flee into the tomb.

The murderous corpse that had been chasing them finally revealed his true face. He was dressed in a black robe, and had a crown on his head that spilled strips of jade beads that covered most of his face, revealing only a milky lower jaw. 

He stopped at the door, his movements awkward, as if he was unused to walking. His whole body was shrouded in an aura of death.

Although he couldn’t see the face of the person, Ji Ning’s heart clenched at the sight of the Emperor’s clothing and he couldn’t stop himself from standing up, a name on his lips.

“Ru…”

The Emperor stood still for a moment, then unsheathed his sword and entered the tomb, heading directly for Ji Ning. 

The teenagers hurriedly moved towards the sides of the tomb. Seeing him go straight towards Ji Ning they were secretly grateful, but before they could breathe a sigh of relief, their breath caught in their throat, stunned expressions on their faces.

“Master…”

The murderous corpse murmured. His voice was deep and the word a little rough, but everyone present could hear what he said.

The teenagers were shocked to see that the murderous corpse who hunted them through most of the underground palace, Emperor Qin Ruwang, who once ruled the world before his death, drop his sword to the floor and bend down on one knee as he lowered his head and called again in a fervent voice. 

“Master.”