Chapter 49
Mirror Lake.
The two of them set off early, the man seemingly feigning sleep, waiting for the first rays of sunlight to set after dawn so he could rise openly. Du Mingxing, uncharacteristically, floated silently beside Shen Chumo, awaiting the final verdict.
Du Mingxing had never imagined that a polluted lake could be so magnificent and strange.
A cold mist lingered over the lake, like last night's moonlight condensed into frost. The mist swirled like a dancing spirit, drifting along the surface, sometimes tumbling, sometimes skimming through the air. In the sunlight, the lake surface was faintly shimmering with a neon halo, as if draped in a shimmering silk gauze.
Yet the lake was completely still, like solidified mercury and silver, a breeze leaving no trace, birds roosting in the distance. The waters were so deep and bottomless that only a glimpse of the shore's clear reflection could be seen. A gust of wind blew, and petals of various colors fell into the water, unexpectedly blooming in the reflection.
Du Mingxing got goosebumps and took two steps back, shrinking his neck. "Do you really want to go down? I'm afraid... afraid of drowning."
"If you were afraid of drowning, why did you..."
Shen Chumo stopped talking in time and didn't say anything more.
Du Mingxing was confused and blinked: "Huh? What?"
"……nothing."
After ten years, it was normal for her to not remember it for a while. Shen Chumo's eyes moved and he took her hand: "Are you still afraid like this?"
Just think of it as a way to repay her for risking her life by jumping into the turbulent river to save him. He just held her hand to help her dispel her fear. There was no other meaning.
Du Mingxing's cheeks instantly turned pink, and the deserter's aura just now weakened a lot. He shook his head slightly as a response.
"D-don't let go," she muttered, squeezing his hand tighter.
Likewise, in response, the man subconsciously tightened his grip.
The girl's hands were soft and boneless. When you held them in your palm, you could wrap them around her completely, or you could hook your fingers between her fingers and then firmly clamp them with your knuckles so that she couldn't pull them out.
He wanted to shake off this strange emotion, but he couldn't help but hold on tighter, trying to grasp this little bit of warmth.
Du Mingxing's mind was full of practical problems, such as the fact that if he held her hand like this, her palms would sweat from nervousness, and their handshake would be covered in her sticky sweat. It would be better to get into the Mirror Lake quickly so that her sweating would not be noticed.
The two of them, each with their own thoughts, walked hand in hand towards the lakeshore.
Du Mingxing saw Shen Chumo's figure emerging from the lake. The hazy rainbow made his temperament even more mysterious and profound. The moment he got closer to the truth, the coldness of the past seemed to fade away from his angular face, and he unguardedly revealed more complex emotions than before, giving him a bit of a living breath.
...Will he look forward to the so-called miracle of the perpetrator reappearing?
As she stepped forward, the lake water gradually covered her ankles. Her feet were soft and slippery, as if she was trapped in a swamp, or as if countless seaweeds from the bottom of the lake were entangled around her and dragging her towards the deepest part of hell, giving her an instinctive fear.
As I endured the lake water reaching my knees, the fear of drowning came to my mind.
After returning to reality, she never went swimming again. She thought she had forgotten it, but the suffocating pain, coupled with the strangely cold lake water, once again brought back the fear buried deep in her heart.
Du Mingxing took a step back, lowered his head and didn't dare to look at him. His eyes were dazed and he was about to find an excuse to escape, but he felt a pulling force on his hand.
"Xingxing." Shen Chumo's voice was surprisingly gentle, and she even smelled a hint of doting.
Du Mingxing held his breath, his heart pounding like a drum: "What did you call me?"
"Didn't you say this was your nickname?"
Du Mingxing looked at him, stunned for a moment.
There seemed to be scattered stars in his dark pupils, and his eyebrows and eyes that were frozen in the past were now melting like the first snow. The mist on the lake also blurred his outline, making him look particularly soft.
His gaze could make anyone of the opposite sex's heart flutter. She lowered her head like a mimosa, somewhat at a loss, and said in a soft voice, "Ah, then do you already know who I am? Would you be willing to forgive..."
Shen Chumo leaned over to her in the mist and held her hand. She realized that the lake water had reached her waist and her toes could not touch the ground. She panicked and her center of gravity tilted and twisted downward.
Soon, a warm hand supported her waist, giving her strength to support her whole body, and the other hand moved up along her wrist, pressing her slightly trembling elbow.
Du Mingxing didn't know where to put her hands and feet. There seemed to be an undercurrent in the middle of the lake, pushing her towards Shen Chumo. He hugged her tightly and whispered in her ear, like a whisper between lovers.
"I never hated you."
Du Mingxing pursed her lips and buried her head in his chest, thinking to herself, but she was just using him to complete the mission in the beginning, and she deliberately said vicious words and bullied him to make him sad. She actually didn't deserve to be saved.
She was grateful to him for giving her the courage to pursue her dreams, and thanked him for approaching her with such a pure heart...but she couldn't say anything, and could only sob intermittently.
The water level was still rising, gradually covering her shoulders, giving her the illusion that she was sinking into the deep sea with Shen Chumo.
The familiar feeling of suffocation climbed up her throat and nose, but Du Mingxing could no longer resist. She slowly closed her eyes. Something soft touched her lips, and her ears buzzed.
In the cold lake water, water plants wrapped around her body inch by inch, slippery and sticky. Their lips kissed each other passionately and tenderly, and her hair twirled and danced in the lake, splashing water everywhere.
The rapids and waves at the bottom of the lake gradually surged. Du Mingxing used his hands and feet to entangle Shen Chumo and fell into the bottomless Mirror Lake.
An irresistible feeling of suffocation enveloped her. She wanted to take a deep breath, but all her gasps and whimpers were swallowed by her lips and teeth.
When Du Mingxing regained consciousness, she found herself in her sea of consciousness, while Shen Chumo was in the middle of an abandoned supermarket. The flickering light of a fire reflected on his cheek, flickering. Suddenly, she woke up, rubbing her burning cheeks, and realized that it was all just a fantasy world.
"I... when did I start hallucinating?" Du Mingxing blushed and stammered.
Shen Chumo turned a deaf ear, as if he hadn't heard the question.
That's right. Du Mingxing sighed. This was the familiar Shen Chumo. How could he be as gentle and passionate as in the illusion?
She simply leaned close to Shen Chumo's ear, put her hands together like a speaker, and amplified the volume: "Shen Chumo, do you hear me talking to you——"
Shen Chumo came back to his senses after a while.
"What did you just say?"
"When did I start hallucinating? And..." Du Mingxing's heart rose to his throat, trembling with fear, "You...didn't hear anything?"
That kind of illusion… Losing face is a small matter, but if Shen Chumo found out that her head was full of pornographic garbage and therefore found her disgusting, it would be too hurtful.
Although Du Mingxing had gradually become clear about her feelings after returning to real life, she had no intention of confessing it before Shen Chumo forgave her, not to mention that she was discovered by him after an unconscious dream.
“Basically, I fainted as soon as I entered,” Shen Chumo shook his head, “Your magic resistance is too weak, unlike my inner demon.”
"...So what did I say after I fainted?"
Shen Chumo paused, shook his head, and fell silent again.
Du Mingxing breathed a sigh of relief. Although Shen Chumo didn't seem to want to say more, she was filled with questions that needed a reasonable explanation: "Why did you insist on me accompanying you? If you wanted to see the illusion, you could have seen it yourself. You had to drag me into it, causing me to almost be discovered... well, drowned."
"The illusion of Mirror Lake is not without conditions. The object of exploration must also be in the lake. Otherwise, no relevant connection can be made."
Du Mingxing seemed to be thinking about something. What he said made sense.
After all, exploring the truth is too complicated and unrealistic without some restrictions. Shen Chumo needs to explore the truth about the inner demon, so she must be present.
but……
"Is this illusion true?"
Du Mingxing is skeptical about this.
Shen Chumo seemed to have caught something and asked, "Why do you ask that?"
"That's right..." Du Mingxing pursed her lips, blushing, and said, "I also saw the vision."
Shen Chumo suddenly held his breath, his face a little tense, and in the end, he could only nod calmly to show that he was listening.
At that time, in the calm lake, the girl fainted in his arms. He did not stop, but walked towards the center of the lake step by step holding the soft body.
The girl's quilt was flooded with water, turning it a darker color and sticking to her body, just like the wet rain outside the gymnasium, revealing her graceful curves.
He stared at her like a fascinated man, his throat dry.
Suddenly, she frowned slightly, her eyelashes trembled, her delicate body moved unconsciously, and then she let out a sweet gasp.
In the panting voice, it was his name, minus the last name, the last two characters, with a hint of "hmm" at the end, like the lingering sound after the last note of a symphony.
It sounds nice and lingering.
Some images suddenly popped into my mind, and they were faded memories.
In the picture, Shen Huaixin swiped the screen of the pad with his fingertips. Finally, the screen interface stopped at a woman's face, accompanied by flashing dynamic text, which was extremely eye-catching - he still remembered that the text was "□□".
Her face flushed, as if she understood the meaning, and she told him that the woman was being massaged.
And now, the patient expression of the girl in his arms is a thousand times more beautiful than the woman in the picture. She is like a flower in bud, touching and tempting to be picked.
Crackling sparks splashed onto the back of Shen Chumo's hand, and he suddenly came back to his senses, pulling his thoughts back to reality. Thinking of what he had seen before, he was inexplicably flustered, but he couldn't tell.
It was as if his chest was being cut open, his heart weighed, its components analyzed with sophisticated instruments to determine just how much of his words were insincere.
He suppressed his impatience and listened to the other party continue to talk.
Du Mingxing's voice was soft, and his tone was neither hurried nor slow, as if he was thinking and organizing his words: "In my fantasy, you called me by my nickname and said that you never hated me."
Then, she laughed self-deprecatingly: "Oh, how is that possible? You hate me so much that you've developed a demon in your heart... right? This shows that the so-called Mirror Lake illusion cannot be fully trusted."
“…”
Shen Chumo lowered his eyes, speechless.
"By the way, Chu Mo, what did you see? How was your guess verified?" After chatting for a long time, Du Mingxing finally remembered the ultimate purpose of this trip.
"Yes, verified."
Shen Chumo added a few more pieces of wood to the firewood pile, and a few embers glowing with fire danced in the air.
"It's you."
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