Antidote
Early in the morning, a noise suddenly came from the cellar entrance. The boy, who was carrying water into the kitchen to prepare a meal, subconsciously stopped and looked outside.
"They haven't come out yet?"
He muttered to himself, put down the bucket and ran over, only to find the door tightly shut, with a piercing scratching sound coming from inside.
"Senior brother, is that you?" He opened the door without any warning. As soon as he opened it a crack, a black thing suddenly pounced inside, startling him so much that he stumbled and fell to the ground. Immediately afterward, more than a dozen large rats without flower petals scurried out from inside.
"Aaaaaah!"
The screams from the backyard made Ren Xiangxiang open her eyes abruptly.
In the yard, Xu Caiyou scrambled and crawled, almost instinctively climbing the nearest tree. Fortunately, the rats didn't attack him; they just ran around the yard.
"Help! Senior brother! Sister Xiangxiang! Help—"
He shouted at the top of his lungs, his face covered in snot and tears, clinging tightly to the tree trunk and staring at the big rats below, begging and pleading that they wouldn't come up.
Perhaps because the cries for help were too pitiful, Ren Xiangxiang and He Wenwen appeared in the backyard one after the other with bruises under their eyes. Upon seeing the scene before them, Ren Xiangxiang's drowsiness vanished instantly. She grabbed an iron rod and smashed a scurrying rat to death with it.
Immediately afterward, He Wenwen also hurriedly sprinkled the poison powder that rats feared around the yard. The rats that were covered in the powder quickly lost their energy and lay sprawled out in a mess.
"It's over." Ren Xiangxiang and He Wenwen exchanged a glance and rushed toward the open cellar door at the same time. He Wenwen stopped Ren Xiangxiang and handed her the remaining powder. "You stay outside and keep watch. I'll go in and take a look. We can't both go in."
After saying that, he went inside alone without waiting for Ren Xiangxiang to speak.
"Xiangxiang... Sister Xiangxiang..." Xu Caiyou on the tree cried until her voice was hoarse. Ren Xiangxiang was anxiously waiting for He Wenwen. When she heard his voice, she subconsciously looked up and asked, "Besides the rats, are there any other things that came out?"
Xu Caiyou, who was in the tree, immediately shook her head.
Ren Xiangxiang's face immediately darkened, and she followed him into the cellar. Xu Caiyou, perched in the tree, cried out anxiously, "Sister Xiangxiang, don't leave me behind! Sister—"
The cellar wasn't very deep, so Ren Xiangxiang soon heard the sounds of fighting coming from inside. The sounds were coming from a hidden room on the side. Ren Xiangxiang rushed in and was met with a bloody, mangled face lunging at her.
"Xiangxiang!" He Wenwen shouted.
Ren Xiangxiang's pupils suddenly contracted. Just as their faces were about to touch, He Wenwen pulled the mutated corpse back. The corpse struggled violently and turned around, pressing down on He Wenwen. Seeing this, Ren Xiangxiang quickly grabbed a small knife and stabbed it hard into the back of the corpse's neck.
As if sensing pain, the corpse immediately released He Wenwen. He Wenwen kicked it away and ran away with Ren Xiangxiang in tow.
Unexpectedly, the corpse suddenly twisted halfway and lunged at the two of them at a strange angle. He Wenwen instinctively protected Ren Xiangxiang and was pulled back by the corpse. At the critical moment, a sharp claw suddenly flew out from his sleeve, went around the corpse's throat and severed it.
With a snap, the corpse's head lolled to one side, and time seemed to stand still for a moment.
Behind the corpse, Ren Xiangxiang held the knife high with both hands, but before she could breathe a sigh of relief, the corpse's back suddenly trembled slightly.
Ren Xiangxiang felt a surge of anger rush to the top of her head, spreading uncontrollably throughout her body. Suddenly, everything before her eyes became bright, especially the second joint of the corpse's spine, which shimmered faintly, like a white moth about to spread its wings and take flight.
die!
A voice suddenly exploded in her mind, and Ren Xiangxiang stabbed the trembling moth with a knife.
In an instant, all was silent. The corpse that had been pressing down on He Wenwen collapsed onto him like a lump of mud.
The stench that hit him almost made him vomit up his dinner from the night before.
"Xiang... Xiang..." He Wenwen struggled to kick the corpse away, enduring the nausea in her stomach, and hurriedly asked, "Your... eyes..."
Ren Xiangxiang was still immersed in the feeling from just now. The blood-pumping, reckless killing seemed to have instantly devoured all her reason. Although it only lasted for a moment, it still left her feeling terrified.
"My eyes?" Ren Xiangxiang murmured, trembling as she touched her eyes, which had returned to normal from their golden vertical pupils.
"It's nothing..." He Wenwen breathed a sigh of relief. "I must have been seeing things."
"No." Ren Xiangxiang struggled to suppress her fear, her voice trembling. "You're not seeing things, I know. I must have accidentally used my demonic power. It's alright, it should be alright..."
She said this to the other person, and also to comfort herself.
—Xiangxiang, although you are human, because I extended your life, you must have my demonic power within you. However, this power can only sustain your life, but once you use it and cannot control it, you will probably end up like a half-demon.
He died in madness.
Ren Xiangxiang tried to regulate her breathing and calm herself down as soon as possible. "Brother Wen, I think I know why he changed. We found him."
"What?" He Wenwen was stunned for a moment.
"Help me lift the body and move it back to the table." Ren Xiangxiang stared intently at the soft, rotting corpse on the ground.
Without hesitation, He Wenwen and Ren Xiangxiang worked together to carry the body back.
One by one, the oil lamps lit up. Ren Xiangxiang slashed open the spine of the corpse with a knife, picked out a bloody mess from the layers of flesh, and then had He Wenwen bring water to wash it clean. What came into view was a fleshy worm that looked like a large white moth, but it had been cut off by Ren Xiangxiang with a knife and was dead beyond any doubt.
Next, Ren Xiangxiang dissected the mutated rat and found a smaller worm at the second joint of its spine.
"It must be this thing causing the trouble. It looks like... a Gu worm..." Ren Xiangxiang muttered to herself, looking at the fleshy worm on the table. She paused, then turned to ask, "Are there any other corpses?"
He Wenwen was holding on at first, but when Ren Xiangxiang asked him a question, he was about to speak when he suddenly felt dizzy.
"Brother Wen!" Ren Xiangxiang exclaimed in surprise and quickly helped him up. Her palms were suddenly warm, and the red color under the lamplight was shocking.
"You're injured? Why didn't you tell me!" Ren Xiangxiang finally noticed his back, stained with blood. "You—"
She quickly helped He Wenwen lean against her, and just in case, she burned the extracted Gu worms with an oil lamp before leaving.
Outside, Xu Caiyou was hanging in the tree, tired, thirsty, and hungry. Looking at the rats lying below, he wanted to go down but was also afraid to. He sobbed and cried, hoping that the two would come out of the cellar, but he waited all morning.
Around noon, Ren Xiangxiang finally helped He Wenwen, whose face was as pale as paper, out of the room, which startled Xu Caiyou into screaming again.
"Ah! Senior Brother! Senior Brother, what's wrong?"
"Why are you still up there? Come down and get a basin of hot water! Hurry!" Ren Xiangxiang shouted.
Xu Caiyou was startled and, disregarding everything else, quickly rolled down to boil water.
Ren Xiangxiang helped He Wenwen lie on the bed before carefully removing his clothes to clean the blood and dirt from his wounds.
He Wenwen groaned softly. Seeing the tense and busy Ren Xiangxiang, she didn't know if it was the effect of the poison, but her brain began to run wild, "Xiangxiang..."
His subconscious told him that it wasn't the right time and he couldn't say it.
"I like you."
Ren Xiangxiang paused, her expression going blank for a moment.
"Stay!" When emotion triumphed over reason, he could finally speak his mind without any guilt. "I'm also an orphan. Besides my master, you're the only person I want to cherish for the rest of my life..."
"W-what are you saying..." Ren Xiangxiang didn't dare look at him, quickly starting to treat her wounds, but her mind was in turmoil. "You must have been injured by the mutated corpse earlier, why didn't you say so? You..."
He Wenwen closed her eyes, her voice weak, "We've known each other longer...we understand each other better...why...Xiangxiang, what is it about me that I lack? Tell me, so I can finally give up...Xiangxiang..."
Ren Xiangxiang bit her lip and quickly fed him a pill to temporarily suppress the spread of the toxin. At this moment, Xu Caiyou also came in with hot water. Seeing the blood on the ground and Ren Xiangxiang's solemn expression, she stood quietly to the side, holding back all her words.
Perhaps due to excessive blood loss, He Wenwen quickly fainted. Xu Caiyou changed the bloody water three times, almost thinking that she would lose her senior brother forever, until Ren Xiangxiang stopped what she was doing and sat on the ground as if she had lost all strength.
"Alright, he's out of immediate danger..."
Xu Caiyou finally couldn't hold back and burst into tears, "Waaaaah... You scared me to death, what happened? Waaaaah..."
"Did you deliver medicine to your master?" Ren Xiangxiang suddenly reminded her.
"Ah!" Xu Caiyou rushed out without even wiping away her tears.
Finally, it's quiet.
Ren Xiangxiang hugged her knees and stayed by the bedside, looking at the pale-faced young man on the bed. She didn't know if it was because of his injury, but he looked very sad. Even though he was unconscious, this sadness was clearly reflected between his brows, and it could not be wiped away.
She suddenly recalled the gloomy and sharp-tongued boy from back then, but in the blink of an eye, he seemed to have disappeared. Perhaps he didn't want to be this way; it's just that she didn't understand anything back then.
"Brother Wen..." Ren Xiangxiang said, unsure whether it was guilt or self-reproach, "I'm sorry..."
The sun shone brightly outside the window, baking the earth, and the sweltering wind made people sweat profusely.
In the dimly lit room filled with the faint scent of medicinal soup, Ren Xiangxiang told Xu Jinnian about her discovery when he woke up. She then asked someone to help move a corpse and began to prepare the antidote without stopping.
Having learned from her previous experience, Ren Xiangxiang prepared the antidote quite smoothly, quickly restoring the mutated rabbit to its original state. As she experimented repeatedly, she became more and more precise in controlling the dosage. By the time she left the cellar, it was already late at night.
A faint white tinge appeared on the horizon, heralding the approach of dawn. Ren Xiangxiang, carrying the antidote that had not yet been tested on living people, arrived at He Wenwen's house.
She wasn't sure if the other person had woken up, but compared to Uncle Xu's situation, He Wenwen was probably the best choice at the moment.
"Who's outside?" He Wenwen's slightly tired voice soon came from inside the house.
Ren Xiangxiang's heart, which had just settled down, suddenly tightened. She whispered, "It's me."
He Wenwen, who was originally leaning lazily, panicked when she heard that it was Ren Xiangxiang. She involuntarily pulled at the wound on her back and gasped.
"hiss……"
The door creaked open. "What are you doing?"
Ren Xiangxiang stopped He Wenwen, who was trying to cover her back wound, and said, "I treated all your injuries. Is it too late to cover them up now?"
Upon seeing this, He Wenwen's face darkened. "You're a young lady, don't you know how to be discreet? Did I let you in?"
"What? Are you not clean anymore?" Ren Xiangxiang retorted, mimicking his tone.
After roasting He Wenwen, whose face turned green, Ren Xiangxiang rolled her eyes at him and said, "I've made the antidote. Do you dare to use you as a guinea pig?"
He then handed over the antidote.
He Wenwen took the antidote with a dark face and swallowed it without even looking at it.
"Aren't you going to think about this? What if you die?" Ren Xiangxiang was speechless.
He Wenwen sneered, "I'm a proper demon-refining master, after all. Can't you tell the difference between poison and antidote? Do you think I'm like you?"
This time, Ren Xiangxiang was speechless with anger. She turned around and left, saying, "Junior Brother Xu will come to change your medicine in a little while. If you can live until tomorrow, the antidote should be fine."
"Xiangxiang!" He Wenwen suddenly called out to her from behind.
He vaguely felt he had said something he shouldn't have yesterday, and now he was racking his brains trying to justify himself. "I... that yesterday..."
"Oh, yesterday!" Ren Xiangxiang turned around with a smile, finally feeling a sense of superiority as she regained her composure. "You leaned weakly on my shoulder, crying like a pear blossom in the rain..."
"Get lost—"
Xu Caiyou was carrying a basin of water to change her senior brother's dressing when she looked up and saw Ren Xiangxiang jump out of the house, smashing a teacup at her feet.
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