Chapter 98 Patience and Deterrence (12)

Large tears rolled down my face, for reasons I couldn't quite put my finger on.

This wasn't the first time Ai Ruiji had burst into tears in front of Shu Ningmiao, but this was the only time Shu Ningmiao didn't push her away.

She stood on tiptoe, frozen in place, her fingertips and back taut with tension, yet the heavy weight on her heart seemed to flow away with her tears.

"I'm sorry... I'm so sorry." Erice cried, clutching the hem of her clothes. With her emotions surging, she finally said what she had been wanting to say all along: "It's all my fault."

It was her naivety and her stupidity that caused the deaths of so many people. Her former classmates were tortured beyond recognition and died tragically in front of her.

The intense emotional turmoil temporarily paralyzed her brain, preventing her from making an appropriate response.

Only now has she slowly regained her voice.

The murderer may have been someone else, but she was the only one tormented by her conscience.

“I was stupid, wasn’t I? I believed everything people said, and I deserved to be deceived…” Eric’s voice trembled. “You and Linlu both warned me, I really… I really shouldn’t be alive.”

She looked up and stared firmly into Shu Ningmiao's eyes, hoping that Shu Ningmiao would say something accusatory.

But only after her tears dried on her face did Shu Ningmiao raise her hand to press her forehead, as if she were sighing, but the sound was barely audible.

Shu Ningmiao's gaze was unfocused from the beginning, like a pointer in the fog, out of balance in a chaotic magnetic field, and it took a long time for it to fall back on her.

Her voice was hoarse: "Naivety is me."

After saying that, she glanced at Erice up and down, a cold laugh escaping her lips: "You're really harming people and you don't even realize you're wrong. What are you repenting for?"

Arrighi was taken aback by her words, his eyes widening suddenly, and he gripped her clothes even tighter. Shu Ningmiao's expression remained calm as she spoke, not as if she were offering comfort or guidance.

But the other person wasn't looking at her anymore.

Shu Ningmiao tilted her head back and felt the cold blood on her face seep into her collar, flowing down the curve of her neck.

She thought she was too naive, too arrogant, too immature to be qualified to judge Erice's right or wrong.

Before awakening her superpowers, she was always arrogant and took the wealth and adulation she received for granted. As a result, she was so arrogant and conceited that she believed she could manipulate power at will—as long as she climbed up the ladder, she could completely control her own destiny and future.

She simply forgot that authority cannot be benevolent.

She could be one of the wheels, or she could be the most insignificant living person crushed under that wheel.

A life crashed against the mast of a giant ship, utterly vulnerable.

Erice stared at her intently: "I feel... you seem a little different than before."

Shu Ningmiao had never looked at her like that before; her gaze would usually just casually glance at her before moving on to something else.

The poise nurtured by money and power made even her arrogant gestures pleasing to the eye; there was nothing wrong with Erice.

But now, Shu Ningmiao looked at her as if she were looking at an equal, living person.

Shu Ningmiao didn't speak. After a while, she took a step back, patted her head, and pushed her wrinkled face away with disgust.

Eric wiped his face, then pressed his face close again, his eyes fixed on her: "Archini... he's really dead?"

She felt completely unreal; her body was still numb, and everything around her seemed like a dream.

"Um."

“But what about his body?” Erice strained her eyes, as if trying to see if there was anything else in the pool of blood at her feet.

"He wasn't even alive to begin with; once he's dead, he's just a pool of blood." Her reply revealed a hint of her previous harshness as she stepped over the blood, a few droplets splashing from her boots. "You want to erect a monument for him?"

“I mean, what if he suddenly comes back to life?” A deep, inexplicable fear lingered around Archini; a shadow constantly hung over her. She felt he couldn't possibly just vanish so easily: “He could just pop out of nowhere…”

Shu Ningmiao sat down with her back to her, her legs resting on the edge of the collapsed floor tiles. She closed her eyes and stared at the large hole in the ruins below, her face showing that she didn't want to pay attention to her.

But Erici had no intention of backing down at all, and crouched behind her step by step, like a fluffy chick that had just hatched.

Shu Ningmiao remained motionless, letting her snuggle closer, leaning against her like a child.

After staring blankly at the collapsed hole for a long time, Shu Ningmiao finally understood where her uneasy feeling had been coming from.

Ah, she forgot about Wei Sheng Qian Heng.

A multitude of emotions flashed through Shu Ningmiao's mind in an instant—

With such extensive damage, he is immobile and has likely died underground.

This was pretty much the result she had expected... In short, it was all Achini's fault, and the Church of Reverence had no say in the matter.

Wei Shengqianheng was also a student of Cornunos, so it was reasonable for him to be kidnapped and for him to die here. So many students had died here, so one more wouldn't make a difference. Compared to the unlucky ones with their limbs flying everywhere, at least he had a complete corpse.

Let's just pretend we don't know.

Shu Ningmiao suddenly stood up, her expression suddenly becoming unusually solemn.

But if Wei Sheng Qianheng doesn't die and happens to be rescued, and says something she shouldn't, then she'll definitely be in big trouble.

Eric observed her expression from the side: "What are you looking at?"

"The basement," Shu Ningmiao replied succinctly.

"Ah...yes." Erice seemed to suddenly remember: "There are still people underground, maybe they're still alive. Shouldn't we contact the people of Pine to come and rescue them? Did you bring your terminal?"

Shu Ningmiao didn't answer her question, but silently counted the time in her mind for a while.

The shielding barrier set up by Achini should be a time-limited physical ability, so the barrier can still last for a while after he switched to Erigie's ability.

If he wasn't lying, the barrier should last for another forty minutes or so.

She had to leave before the Pignes army discovered her, which wasn't difficult, but first she had to deal with two major, living problems in the church.

Secondly, she prefers a different one.

"I'll go down and take a look. You wait here for a while." Shu Ningmiao didn't give her a chance to react. She nimbly followed the edge of the collapsed floor tiles and jumped down into the large hole that had become ruins. She quickly found a gap to go down into in a space formed by collapsed walls and pillars supporting each other.

She crawled inside and successfully swung back underground, clinging to the surrounding protrusions. After the second collapse, the underground space became even narrower.

The air was fragmented into cramped patches by the ruins, and my lungs started to feel tight after just a few breaths.

Shu Ningmiao wasn't delusional enough to search the entire underground area. She hadn't found any survivors, and the rescue team might not be able to either. If Wei Shengqianheng, with a broken leg, was trapped under a pile of rubble and still managed to come out alive, then she could only accept that he was incredibly lucky.

Perhaps she was just lucky; in such a narrow place, she hadn't walked more than a few steps when she heard a few suppressed coughs.

She squeezed through the narrow hole, and above her, a large section of the wall collapsed at an angle, wedging itself into a crevice in the stone, forming a low, triangular space just large enough to protect an adult man.

It has to be said that Weisheng Qianheng is incredibly lucky.

This place was so perfect, it was like a mother's womb, just right for him, with no room for anything else. Shu Ningmiao bent down, her hair falling over his face.

Wei Shengqianheng leaned against the wall, motionless, with only occasional coughs proving that he was still alive.

Shu Ningmiao reached out and tugged at his long hair that hung down in front of his chest.

Wei Shengqianheng opened his eyes, his eyelashes trembling faintly in the darkness. On his bloodless face, his thin lips parted only slightly: "I'm still alive."

Shu Ningmiao remained silent, staring at him quietly.

Several thoughts kept swirling in her mind: she could make Wei Sheng Qian Heng close his eyes forever without anyone noticing.

If she took him out, she could indeed find a way to shut him up, but it would be much more troublesome than the former.

She was in a bad mood, and seeing his irritation mixed with his anger, it seemed there was no reason not to choose the simpler method... But at the same time, she was beginning to feel a little tired of the implications of killing.

Wei Shengqianheng seemed to sense the meaning behind her silence, and his cough became even more suppressed, almost like a painful moan.

He groped for her hand in the darkness and gently placed his fingers on the back of her hand that was gripping the knife hilt.

Shu Ningmiao looked away, feeling the cold, damp touch of his fingertips on her skin, a strange sensation.

He turned his head, his straight nose brushing against the crook of her neck. Shu Ningmiao leaned back, her back slamming against the wall with a thud, and lime dripped down with a soft sound.

Wei Shengqianheng grabbed her wrist with his other hand, his breath light, but with a hint of mockery in his voice: "I'll tell you a secret."

Shu Ningmiao thought to herself, "I'm not interested."

But before he could speak, Wei Shengqianheng had already pulled her hand, moved his fingers down a few inches, and intertwined them with hers.

The sticky, cold touch felt like sticking to a piece of live flesh.

Shu Ningmiao's mind trembled for a moment. She tried to pull her fingers away, but she felt him gripping her tighter and tighter, his ten fingers being twisted tightly and refusing to let go.

She forcefully dragged his hand up in front of them, and through the gaps in the rubble above, she could vaguely see his slender hands clasped with hers. They were covered in wounds, and black liquid was dripping from the exposed flesh, with the withered white bone faintly visible.

Thick, dark liquid flowed from between her fingers.

Shu Ningmiao's mind went blank.

When did his gloves go missing?

Whenever she saw Wei Shengqianheng, he was always wearing a pair of airtight black gloves.

Now, without gloves, the sticky chill shot straight to the top of her head.

When was it... Right, it was Su Ni. At first, Su Ni used her superpower to cut his hand, but she didn't care. At that time, Wei Sheng Qian Heng had probably already taken off his gloves.

Wei Shengqianheng showed no reaction to her tense arms, his eyes lowered, his dark eyes staring at her intently.

"The secret I'm going to tell you."

He leaned his shoulder to her ear, his breath light and shallow, sending shivers down her spine: "It's the answer you've always wanted to know."

What she was most curious about and most suspicious of was his eccentric personality.

After Wei Shengqianheng finished speaking, Shu Ningmiao thought to herself, "So he knew what she was suspicious about."

Why was he so calm and indifferent in the face of life and death?

Why did he always wear those airtight gloves?

Why is it that he, as a holy son of the Church, personally cared for every patient in the asylum and had such a deep understanding of the course of Manla disease?

He remained unmoved by her doubts, tests, and threats, deliberately misleading her judgment. Was he merely a dying man's perverse pleasure towards a survivor?

Shu Ningmiao grabbed his hand and lifted him up. His bones seemed weightless, more like a wet net than his limbs.

This time, she held his hand even tighter than he did: "When did you contract Manla disease?"