Chapter 69 Nan Yue's Past: Memories

It's as if she's had a new core.

Tang Yu felt as if a layer of skin had been peeled off her entire body.

Even when enveloped in the cold, viscous blood, it felt like her skin was being scorched by fire, and her meridians felt like they were being pierced by thousands of fine needles. The pain made her want to scream and howl, but she could only choke on the bloody liquid, making it difficult for her to breathe.

As Tang Yu sank deeper into the pool, her consciousness gradually blurred, and her soul seemed to be ripped from her body and dragged to a very, very far place.

There are crimson pools of blood, cries and screams, and countless tiny bones, an undying lament of death.

Without warning, she was dragged back into the nightmare.

It was still that same pool of blood.

Unlike the pool full of children when I first remembered it, now only a handful of figures remain, submerged in blood.

It feels like ages have passed since the last time.

They no longer had childish faces; they seemed to have grown up quite a bit. Their limbs had become slender, and the soft, innocent look in their eyes had faded, leaving only numbness and exhaustion.

Fortunately, the children seem to have gotten used to the way they survive here.

The loss of their companions in the blood is their "time" to catch their breath.

There's no need to fight anymore, and the arguments have disappeared. All that's left is to be silent enemies, yet not to interfere with each other, like living in a human hell where you only need to count the days.

Just then, the group of women who had been responsible for cleaning up the remains entered the cave again.

Clutching long, thin iron chains, they cursed and threw them one by one into the pool of blood. The chains sank into the blood with a dull thud, creating large ripples of dark red.

The girls used their last bit of strength to fight for the iron chain.

At the front of the chain was a cold iron ring, like a yoke around the neck of livestock.

Tang Yu couldn't hear or see what the women were saying, but from their scolding tone and impatient expressions, she could tell that they were urging the girls to put on the iron rings.

Hope shone in the girls' eyes, believing this was their chance to escape the pool of blood.

So they fought and scrambled.

But right after the first girl with the iron ring was dragged ashore.

The next instant, the woman pulled a sharp dagger from her sleeve.

The girl's expression changed from joy to astonishment, and then to fear.

Finally, it turned into an unfathomable despair.

The sharp dagger wasn't meant to kill the girl, but rather to leave scars of varying depths on her smooth, delicate skin, one cut at a time...

Finally, the woman grabbed the girl's arm and ruthlessly plunged the knife into her upper arm, slowly and cruelly carving out a clear crescent moon.

Tang Yu stared intently at the bright red mark, and couldn't help but raise her hand to touch her left arm. But in the void, she naturally couldn't touch anything.

Bright red blood meandered down from the tip of the moon, flowing down her fair arms, gathering at her fingertips before finally shattering on the ground.

This scene terrified the remaining girls, who frantically tried to retreat back into the blood pool, desperately pulling on the chains.

But the collars were put on by their own hands.

Their lives and deaths were naturally beyond their control.

The women yanked hard on the chains, making a grating metallic scraping sound. Even if they struggled, cried, and fell, there were only two possible outcomes.

They would either have their flesh slashed open by the sharp edge of a knife, or be torn apart by iron chains until they suffocated, eventually drowning in a pool of blood.

Tang Yu could only watch helplessly from afar, like an audience member below a stage, as each child was branded with the mark of "Yue Qimeng" amidst their screams.

The hellish scene was far from over.

The girls, whose skin had been cut and who were on the verge of death, were thrown back into the pool of blood.

The pungent sweetness of blood and flesh completely shattered the fragile balance between "human" and "poison."

Countless Gu worms swarmed in like a tide, greedily gnawing at their flesh and blood, even burrowing into their bodies through wounds and devouring their internal organs.

At this moment, pain and despair once again permeated the narrow cave, perhaps even more terrifying than hell.

The dream suddenly sped up, and in Tang Yu's eyes, the girls' skin rapidly ulcerated under the bites of the Gu worms and the corrosive effects of the toxins, revealing their stark white bones—a truly horrifying sight.

In the end, they sank to the bottom of the pool, becoming nourishment for the Gu worms and forever becoming part of the blood pool.

A few girls were lucky enough to survive, but their wounds were difficult to heal, especially on their arms, where a crescent-shaped scar remained forever.

This cruel ritual is repeated every few weeks.

The number of children remaining in the blood pool was already dwindling, and fewer and fewer of them were dying.

Until only two people remained:

An older girl who survived to this day by eating Gu worms and stealing water.

And the younger child she taught to eat insects and who was cared for.

Tang Yu suddenly felt a slight warmth flowing through her body.

As she was confused, the dream before her eyes began to blur and peel away, as if some invisible force was pulling her from the depths of her memory back to reality inch by inch.

Her consciousness rose from the cold darkness, and she slowly opened her eyes.

What came into view was an all-too-familiar pool of cold, sticky blood.

The pain was more intense and sharper than the phantom pain in a nightmare. Even a shallow breath felt like being scorched by fire, as if the entire body was being disassembled and reconstructed from the inside out.

The knife cuts and worms gnawing at her in her dream now overlapped with reality, giving her the illusion that her nightmare had come true.

At this moment, Tang Yu had to admit that people have always been slaves to their memories.

We always remember the warm and happy times, and therefore selectively forget the painful and dark past.

Those terrifying scenes were never a dream. They were real memories buried deep within her mind.

The past has never disappeared; it is simply waiting for an opportunity to be revived.

She was in great pain, both physically and mentally, but she was not weak.

Instead, a strange force was slowly surging within my body, spreading from the depths of my heart through my blood to every part of my body.

Even their senses are more acute than ever before.

The dripping water droplets on the stalagmites, the swirling insects in the pool, and the sound of a poisonous snake slithering across a flower stem are all clearly discernible.

Just then, a gentle yet cold female voice rang in my ears: "You're awake."

Tang Yu tilted her head slightly.

In my field of vision, I saw Yueying's smiling and beautiful face.

She stood on the stone steps not far from the blood pool, her eyes filled with undisguised hatred, coldly looking down at Tang Yu, who was half-floating and half-submerged in the blood pool.

Tang Yu slowly curled the corners of her lips and returned a cold, polite smile.

It possessed a strange tranquility, as if it were reborn from blood, a being that had undergone a complete transformation.

Yueying's smile froze instantly.

As if stung by that smile, an indescribable irritation rose in her chest. She slowly walked down the stone steps, each step extremely light, but her eyes were fixed on Tang Yu, as if trying to find something in her eyes.

Yuexi was oblivious to the strange atmosphere between the two, her expression trembling with excitement at the Holy Maiden's awakening, her voice even shaking: "Holy... Holy Maiden..."

Tang Yu glanced back faintly, the smile on her lips so faint it seemed to be blown away by the wind.

That smile was as ethereal as morning mist, devoid of any earthly warmth, and showing no trace of the emotions one would expect from a normal person. Yet it was gentle and kind, ethereal as if it were a deity, unlike any mortal.

Although it was the same eyebrows and eyes, the unwavering gaze was extremely unsettling.

It's as if she's had a new core.

Yueying narrowed her eyes and finally spoke tentatively: "Tang Yu... or, are you already... Yue Qimeng?"

Facing her probing gaze, Tang Yu neither avoided it nor yielded, simply replying, "You can call me whatever you want."

It's as if she doesn't care who she is, and as if she knows that these things are no longer enough to define "her" in the present moment.

For a moment, Yueying was lost in thought and involuntarily stopped in her tracks, never expecting such a nonchalant answer.

The hatred for Tang Yu was like hitting cotton wool, finding no point of impact.

A feeling of powerlessness, desolation, and near absurdity churned in her chest.

If the suffering and torment I caused her can't make her feel pain, then what does it even mean?

Tang Yu maintained her unchanging faint smile, quietly waiting for the Gu worms within her body and the power of the blood pool to fully merge and recover.

A few breaths later, Tang Yu suddenly spoke: "Back then, in the Blood Pool... the girl who taught me to live by eating Gu was you, wasn't she?"

Yueying's heart tightened sharply.

She never expected that after waiting for so long, she would receive such a sentence.

A nameless rage suddenly surged within him. "What do you mean?"

Tang Yu looked at her inexplicable anger, a rare hint of confusion appearing in her eyes. After a moment of serious thought, she said, "State the facts."

The voice was clear and melodious. Yet there was neither the joy of recalling old friends, nor resentment or anger, nor the sorrow of "having shared hardships but now being separated."

It was just a simple statement of facts.

"No wonder you hate Tang Yu so much. It turns out that all along, whether it was enduring the disgust to eat insects or fighting with other test subjects, you were the one who tried the hardest to survive." Tang Yu spoke calmly, as if what she was saying had nothing to do with her, without any emotion.

Yueying gripped her sleeve tightly with her fingertips, struggling to control the trembling caused by anger. But even though she stared fiercely at Tang Yu, she couldn't elicit the slightest emotional response from him.

After a while, she calmed herself down, let out a stiff laugh, and admitted it without any hesitation: "So what if it is? What, shouldn't it be me?"

Even though he tried to suppress it, he couldn't help but feel a pang of bitterness in his eyes.

She suddenly raised her voice: "Without me, you would have starved to death in the pool of blood long ago! How could you have been marked with the final mark? How could you have waited for Qimeng to choose you?!"

Tang Yu did not refute.

In her mind, images of bones and blood devoured by the Gu worms, rotting and peeling flesh, the sweet and pungent smell of the blood pool... and Yueying, whose skin eventually began to ulcerate and spread, all appeared one after another.

And, the final step to becoming "Moon Dream"—

The fusion with the King of All Poisons, Qimeng.

It's ridiculous that the symbol of Nan Yue, the saintess whom she cherished, was always just a vessel.

Even her name is simply borrowed from the same two characters as the Gu King: "Qimeng".

Moon Dream, a pathetic object given a divine shell.

But for Tang Yu now, these memories are like looking at the sea through glass—two different worlds.

She was more curious, "How did you escape the blood pool back then? And how did your festering skin heal?"

Although Yueying was slightly taken aback, she did not shy away from talking about it: "Back then, when the Great Xia attacked Nanyue, the Holy Land's seclusion bought a lot of time. The Yue clan took the opportunity to arrange for assassins to take away the next Holy Maiden. At the same time, they also took away the key to open the Myriad Gu Blood Pool."

Tang Yu's gaze fell on her, and she suddenly realized, "So, this is why you insisted on stealing the corpse."

Over the years, the corpses that were painstakingly searched in Sichuan not only took away the saintess whom Nan Yue had "carefully nurtured," but also the only key that could open the blood pool.

“That’s right.” Yueying smiled smugly and continued, “Now that you remember everything, you should know how much I wanted to live. I used all my strength to climb out of the blood pool and out of that door, before the Great Xia people rushed in and the former Holy Maiden closed the stone door.”

As she spoke, the bloodshot in her eyes deepened, and even her voice trembled, suggesting that it was not a pleasant memory.

“My skin was almost completely ulcerated, and I was just a child of about ten years old. The people of Daxia didn’t examine me carefully and just let me go.” Yueying looked at the blind old man not far away, her heart filled with mixed feelings. “Later, it was Old Mu, who was also alive, who took me back.”

"He healed your face?" Tang Yu asked, but her gaze fell on her hands, which were soaked in the pool of blood.

It seems that they are now able to move around freely.

Yueying scoffed coldly: "You think the festering wounds caused by Gu poison are so easy to cure?"

“I had been suffering from Gu poison until that woman from the Si family appeared.”

Tang Yu was certain: "He will bring disaster."

Yueying didn't answer, but continued talking to herself, "She needed Xue Jin to save people. In exchange, she not only left behind all the Gu formulas and secret techniques she found in the Holy Land, but also the Xue Jin antidote formula that she had been studying for a long time."

A rare smile of satisfaction appeared on her face.

Tang Yu raised her eyes, her gaze calm yet as deep as a bottomless well: "But Blood Hibiscus can only detoxify, it can't heal the scars left by the ulceration."

The smile on Yueying's face vanished abruptly, her soft lips trembled slightly, and a chilling curve appeared on her lips.

"That's because... I changed my skin."