Chapter 106 The pale face turned up vaguely overlapped with a figure that did not exist.
Red flowers blooming in the darkness emit a bewitching yet eerie faint glow.
Silently, it extends its slender, tendril-like roots and leaves.
Tiny tentacles pierce the smooth skin surface, as if taking root in fertile soil.
The pale flesh rolled back, and the scarlet branches disappeared into it.
Without a trace of blood, tiny tentacles stitched the wound tightly like needles and thread, leaving behind fine red stitches like those of a centipede.
After a while, the red mark disappeared.
The skin on his chest returned to its previous smoothness, with no trace of invasion visible.
After a while, the chest that had been still began to rise and fall.
One beat after another resounded, a vibrant human pulse.
Then the rest of the parts, which had been hidden in the darkness, suddenly appeared before his eyes.
A face with excessively pale skin was revealed through strands of hair that were as tangled as an inky spiderweb. Her features were delicate and refined, exuding an aura of aloofness and unapproachability. However, the red beauty mark under her eye added a touch of vibrancy to this somewhat cold face.
That is...
That is...
The name seemed to be on the tip of his tongue, yet he held back from uttering it.
He watched as a new face peeked out from the side of that familiar face.
A gloomy and ruthless boy's weeping face, a mysterious and unpredictable man's smiling face, and a blood-soaked face staring blankly at the distant horizon, a face somewhere between a boy and a young man, with eyes wide open in death...
Suddenly, all the faces turned to him at the same time, their expressions a mixture of joy, anger, sorrow, greed, hatred, and resentment, all looking at him with a variety of emotions.
Those intense gazes seemed to envelop him entirely like a large net.
It was like a series of sharp, poisonous thorns that pierced him instantly!
"ah!"
Pipa awoke from her dream to find the moon high in the sky.
Outside the window, the night was vast and dark. A man stood in front of the window, the moonlight falling on the ends of his dark hair, as if coated with a layer of white frost.
Pipa immediately recognized the owner of that figure as the prototype of the strange, neither-human-nor-ghost thing in her dream.
The lingering effects of the nightmare still haunted my mind.
Pipa didn't know why she was dreaming about those things. This dream was different from all her previous dreams.
Perhaps it's because of what happened during the day.
Watching Lan Yunzhi cut open A-Liu's chest without blinking and take out what was buried deep inside, it was one thing, but what he took out was not an organ, nor a bone, but a moving, dark red flower.
When Pipa heard Lan Yunzhi say that that was the real A-Liu, her mind went blank.
Until I saw that thing start moving on its own even without wind...
Pipa felt that the string that had been taut in her mind ever since she arrived in this place had finally broken down.
At this moment, the bedding beneath him had been completely changed, and even the clothes he was wearing were no longer the ones he had worn when he arrived.
However, the lingering scent of blood mixed with the aroma of herbs in the air constantly reminded Pipa that everything that had happened before was not just a delusion on his part.
At least Ah Liu should have indeed been stabbed by himself and fainted from exhaustion; this should be a fact.
As for the rest...
Pipa wanted to ask the only two eyewitnesses present.
However, due to the absurd dream she had just experienced, Pipa was still unsure how to face Lan Yunzhi in the present state.
Is it simply a case of what you think about during the day manifesting in your dreams at night, or... a hint from the unseen world?
Before Pipa could figure out how to start the conversation, a soft gurgling sound unexpectedly broke his plan to remain still.
He was indeed hungry.
Having not eaten for a long time and having experienced so many unexpected events and huge shocks in a short period of time, it's inevitable to feel hungry.
Hearing the noise, Lan Yunzhi turned around, looked at the boy and smiled slightly: "Are you hungry?"
Just like countless times before in the Flower Moon Pavilion.
They brought him carefully prepared food.
Seeing that the loquat didn't immediately start eating, he personally scooped up some rice with a spoon and fed it to the boy.
"Eat something, or your body won't be able to handle it," Lan Yunzhi gently advised.
The loquat did not refute, letting the other party feed it bite by bite.
But his eyes kept unconsciously looking at the porcelain-white hand holding the spoon.
I recall that the young man used the same hand to cut open his chest and take the flower during the day.
The food that was fed to me suddenly tasted strange.
It smelled like blood, and also like the bitterness of medicine.
Pipa paused for a moment, meeting Lan Yunzhi's probing gaze. She then swallowed everything in her mouth, indicating that she was full.
Lan Yunzhi stared at the loquat for a while, even though he hadn't eaten anything, he seemed to be quite unsatisfied.
After the palace servants came in and removed the things, the room returned to that unsettling silence.
Pipa finally couldn't help but break the silence first.
“Ah Liu, he…”
"He's fine, he just needs some time to recover," Lan Yunzhi said slowly. "It just so happens that his original body is no longer usable, and it will take some time to find a new, suitable body."
"A new...body?"
Pipa thought he would get used to it no matter what, but the expression on his face betrayed him.
"yes."
Lan Yunzhi answered softly, her gaze towards the loquat filled with a quiet, eager anticipation.
"You should understand that the physical body is merely a temporary vessel for us; only memories and the soul are the eternal symbols of immortality."
No, Pipa really wanted to answer directly.
He didn't understand what Lan Yunzhi was saying at all.
I don't understand who "we" refers to in the other person's words.
But at the same time, it seemed as if another eerie voice whispered in my ear: Indeed, if you don't believe me—
What if I don't believe it?
How did things end up like this...?
At that moment, Pipa seemed to hear a low, slightly mocking laugh. The laugh vanished without a trace, like smoke, but it caused a great shock in the boy's heart.
He instinctively lowered his head, looking at his palms, opening them in front of him and then clenching them again, as if confirming something.
But nothing happened.
There was no flaw whatsoever to prove that the auditory hallucination just now was real.
The loquat looked around.
He woke up here twice during the day, once in the afternoon and once at dusk.
So, this must have been the first time he had seen what this place looked like at night.
But……
Loquat, however, could clearly picture the room's furnishings in her mind.
Even the corresponding books on each bookshelf.
Pipa knew very well that she was not particularly gifted and did not have any photographic memory.
Just now, Lan Yunzhi saw that he had woken up, so she lit a few lamps near the bed.
By the dim candlelight, Pipa's gaze swept across the furnishings in the room, matching them one by one with the impressions in her mind.
When his gaze swept across a certain wall, his heart suddenly skipped a beat, followed by a series of intense palpitations.
Thump, thump, thump...
Intuition told him that something behind that wall was inexplicably drawing him closer.
Lan Yunzhi, who had been watching Pipa's every move, also followed the boy's gaze and looked in that direction.
There was no surprise on his face, but rather an even gentler expression: "Want to see what's behind that?"
Lan Yunzhi asked without any hesitation, and then watched with satisfaction as the other person suddenly looked away and turned to look at him.
"Are you willing to satisfy my curiosity?" Pipa asked skeptically.
Lan Yunzhi smiled, took the boy's hand again, and gently pressed her face against his.
Like a believer begging for mercy, he raised his clear eyes, which seemed capable of drowning all things in the world, and gazed deeply at the boy.
"I've said it before, I will do everything I can to fulfill your wishes because I love you, and that will never change."
Those eyes, that red beauty mark, and what the young man said... made Pipa involuntarily think of that shadow who always sat alone in the dark.
"orchid……"
The name just slipped out without my noticing.
Then I realized what I had said.
Then she came to her senses; Lan Yunzhi's name also began with "Lan"—
As expected, Lan Yunzhi did not show the slightest surprise, but continued to smile confidently and nodded gently in response.
"I am here."
He said, "I'm right here."
The pale face tilted upwards vaguely overlapped with a figure that did not exist.
Such a gentle, docile, unassuming boy who never fought or struggled, never showing the slightest temper...
Pipa was stunned. He probably had never seen a boy like that before, but something inside his heart seemed to softly collapse.
Pipa looked at the young man who pressed his cheek against his palm and smiled gently at him.
The face suddenly blurred before his eyes, and he seemed to see many similar faces within it, a hazy, incomprehensible blur—
An unprecedented sense of deep guilt suddenly struck Pipa's heart.
He blinked hard, and a warm tear fell onto his face with a soft pat.
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