Chapter 31 Dilemma
Then, a completely different, searing heat suddenly exploded from her heart! It was as if someone had ignited a blazing charcoal fire within her. Ice and fire clashed and tore at her body frantically. Cold sweat instantly soaked her already damp clothes, clinging to her skin.
Her vision began to shake violently and blur. Cui Junji's figure, squatting before her, twisted and distorted, creating countless swaying shadows. Besides the rumbling of rain, a sharp, persistent humming sound suddenly filled her ears, like countless needles piercing her brain.
"Oh my god, it's poisonous!" Wen Youqing's voice was as weak as a mosquito's, filled with the panic of a dying person. She tried to grasp the swaying figure in front of her, but her fingers were limp and powerless. She could only scratch the cold rock a few times in vain before falling into a deep sleep.
Cui Junji's expression changed drastically. He suddenly grabbed her cold and trembling wrist, his fingers accurately touching her pulse.
The pulse beneath his fingers was chaotic and violent, sometimes like a galloping horse, sometimes like a gossamer thread, with a frightening restlessness and emptiness. He immediately looked at the clumps of weeds on the inside of the stone platform, his eyes sharp as a torch, carefully distinguishing the shapes of the blades - slender, with slightly serrated edges. Near the roots, in the dim light, seemed to reveal an extremely ominous scarlet hue, almost invisible after being washed away by rain!
Cui Junji's eyes instantly froze into ice, a deep chill of shock, anger, and regret flashing across them. He abruptly released her wrist, feeling as if burned by a branding iron. His body tensed backward, his Adam's apple rolling up and down with difficulty.
"Red Kiss Orchid!" These three words were squeezed out from between his teeth, low and hoarse, carrying a heavy and indescribable complexity of being mocked by fate.
Wen Youqing, who had lost consciousness, could not hear anything.
Red Kiss Orchid... He had seen this name before in the fragments of "A Study of Strange Poisons in the Southern Wilderness" collected by the Wen family. It grew in desperate places, its color was ordinary, but its poison was strange and treacherous. If it was infected... if it was infected...
Sharp fragments of memory pierced his chaotic mind: the fragment depicted the distorted face of the poisoned person, and next to it was a shocking cinnabar annotation: 'The cold air torments each other, hallucinations abound, and the qi and blood are disordered... Men will be fine, but women, who belong to the yin element, will be frozen to death!'
A huge, overwhelming fear instantly gripped him!
"No..." Cui Junji murmured softly. If she died, firstly, he would have no way to explain himself. What would he need to explain to the small Shen family? Secondly... secondly, she couldn't die.
A deep emptiness and coldness gnawed at her, gnawing at her frantically. She murmured unconsciously, like a dying traveler longing for an oasis. She desperately reached out, her icy fingers clawing at the source of heat, trying to grasp the coolness that could calm the hellfire within her.
"Cold... give it to me..." Broken whispers escaped from her red lips, carrying a kind of frightening desire and fragility that she herself had not even noticed.
The moment her fingertips touched Cui Junji's body, it suddenly tensed, like a bowstring stretched to its limit. He jerked back, avoiding her unconscious scratching, his movements so quick that they brought a cool breeze.
Reason and education made him stare at her intently. Deep in those eyes that were always calm and sharp, there was now a turbulent wave of shock, disbelief, deep struggle, and a dark undercurrent that was forcibly suppressed.
Why did he bring her here alone? To expose the corrupt officials in Wang's army? To force Wang Rong and Shen Zijie to protect her? It all seemed far-fetched.
"Wen Youqing!" Cui Junji shouted, his voice hoarse and tense, almost a stern warning. He reached out, not to comfort her, but with irresistible force, firmly pressing down on her shoulders, which were twisting in heat and pain, pinning her to the cold rock.
His palms were burning hot, and the astonishing heat came through the wet clothes. The heat seemed to burn her cold skin, but strangely, it also made the coldness in her body roar even more wildly.
He looked down at her. The woman's fair cheeks were now unusually pale. Fine beads of sweat mixed with cold raindrops rolled down her smooth forehead, slid across her burning red earlobes, and sank into the depths of her disheveled clothes.
Those eyes, always clear, bright, and unruly, were now covered with a layer of shimmering mist, blurring and out of focus, leaving only pure, burning pain and a heart-pounding, primal, empty longing. Her mouth was slightly open as she gasped, and her breath was scorching hot, her lips like ravaged petals, delicate and tempting.
Cui Junji's breath suddenly caught, and the fingers pressing down on her shoulders unconsciously tightened, their knuckles turning white from the effort. The struggle in his eyes was like a deep pool into which a rock had been thrown. Beneath the violent ripples, something deeper and more dangerous quietly gathered and surged.
He suddenly closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, the turbulent waves in those deep pools seemed to be forcibly suppressed, settling into a thick, almost desperate darkness. Deep in that darkness, something had broken through.
He loosened his grip on her shoulders, his movements heavy and desperate. Then, he raised his hand, without hesitation, and ripped off the sleeve of his left arm!
“Sizzle—”
Amidst the sound of violent rain, the crisp sound of silk tearing seemed unusually clear and harsh.
The thick, dark fabric ripped open with a clang, and he roughly tore it open, revealing a muscular forearm. Rain immediately washed over the bronzed skin, running down the lines of taut muscle. Most striking was a shallow, yet slowly oozing, wound on the inside of his arm—the result of a sharp rock fall. Rainwater mixed with blood, leaving a faint red mark on his arm.
Cui Junji's gaze was fixed on the wound, its complex expression as thick as the thickest ink, churning with pain, determination, and a near-self-destructive madness. His Adam's apple rolled violently, and when he spoke again, his voice was hoarse like sandpaper rubbing against rusty iron, each word imbued with something heavy and unspeakable:
"Antidote...my blood will do the trick too."
Before he finished speaking, he no longer hesitated and suddenly leaned down! He pressed his wrist to Wen Youqing's mouth.
In Wen Youqing's confused consciousness, there was a strange warm touch mixed with a strong smell of rust, which suddenly hit her lips that were cracked due to the heat!
“Hmm…!”
She instinctively let out a short gasp of surprise, her body trembling violently, as if struck by an electric current. The touch was overbearing, burning, and carried an irresistible force and the strong aura of a strange man, instantly overwhelmed her already fragile body.
Immediately afterwards, a warm liquid with a strong smell of blood flowed into her mouth.
The smell of blood was so strong that it was sickening, like rusty iron melting in the mouth, with a primitive and brutal impact.
Wen Youqing's chaotic mind buzzed, and her remaining consciousness issued a sharp alarm! Her instinct to resist made her subconsciously struggle, pressing her hands against his strong arms, trying to push away this tough invasion.
Yet, her resistance seemed futile against Cui Junji's strength. One of his arms, like an iron hoop, wrapped around her waist, pressing her deeper into him, while the other gripped the back of her neck firmly, preventing her from retreating. His movements were filled with a desperate brutality and unquestionable control, as if he wanted to crush and devour her.
The hot liquid with the smell of blood continuously flowed into her throat. At first, she felt a strong sense of nausea, and her stomach was churning.
But the strange thing was that as the fishy and hot liquid slid into the burning esophagus, the coldness in her body that was madly tearing at her was like being thrown into boiling oil, suddenly exploding, and then began to melt and retreat at an incredible speed!
The biting cold was moving away, replaced by a strange, numb warmth that spread from the stomach to every part of the body.
Wherever this warm current passed, the intense pain receded like a tide, leaving behind a near-fainting weakness and... an unfamiliar, shuddering sense of comfort. It was as if the dry, cracked earth had finally been moistened by a gentle rain.
The strength to struggle was instantly drained away. The hands that had been resting on his arms slid limply down. Wen Youqing's consciousness seemed to float in warm water, rising and falling. The pain was gone, leaving only a deep, sinking sense of bewilderment and weariness.
She couldn't help but slightly open her lips, no longer passively enduring it, and even began to unconsciously and clumsily chase the source of the blood, instinctively absorbing the "antidote" that could calm all the chaos in her body.
This subtle change is like a spark thrown into boiling oil.
Cui Junji's fingers that were clasping her neck suddenly froze!
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