novelraw Chapter 253: Across Thousand Rivers and Mountains, Will You Watch With Me?
Chapter 253: Across Thousand Rivers and Mountains, Will You Watch With Me?
A fragrant softness pressed against his chest!
Zhao Wen was drowned in overwhelming happiness.
He held Lin Wei's soft body tightly, the faint scent of the girl's hair lingering at his nose, and he felt as if this moment were too wonderful to be real.
His mind had already begun to fantasize about the future: a hero rescuing a beauty, winning her heart, getting into the same university, graduating and marrying, even already thinking of names for their future children…
He closed his eyes in bliss, wishing time would stop at this instant.
Zhao Wen wallowed in blissful daydreams.
He did not notice at all.
Nestled in his arms, Lin Wei’s once pitiable eyes now held a trace of cruelty.
Lin Wei’s mouth twisted upward, two sharp fangs quietly slipping past her lips.
The exposed skin of her body turned unnaturally pale at a speed visible to the naked eye, completely drained of color, like that of the dead.Zhao Wen thought the atmosphere was perfect.
He recalled how Lin Wei once said on social media that she really liked an anime;
he had even gone out of his way to finish watching it.
In what he thought was the most romantic tone, he delivered the confession line he had carefully chosen from that anime:
“Weiwei… if we can get out alive… across a thousand rivers and mountains, will you watch it with me?”
He believed that at this critical life-or-death moment, hearing such a romantic promise would surely melt the goddess’s heart!
Lin Wei gave a light laugh in his arms, “Sure… if we can get out alive.”
Zhao Wen was ecstatic and hurriedly said, “We will definitely get out alive…”
“Pfft—!”
Zhao Wen’s voice was cut off abruptly. He lowered his head in disbelief and saw a claw, its nail razor-sharp, having already pierced through his chest.
Blood dripped down from that hand with a steady patter.
Zhao Wen painfully lifted his head and looked at the face close at hand.
That beautiful face that had haunted his dreams was now as pale as paper.
Her mouth was twisted into an inhuman grin, revealing sharp fangs, and her eyes contained only mockery.
“You…?”
Zhao Wen opened his mouth but could only utter that single syllable before his body went limp and collapsed backward.
His eyes were wide open, unable to close in death.
Lin Wei slowly withdrew the bloodied claw and flicked it disdainfully.
Looking at Zhao Wen’s corpse on the ground, she gave an exceedingly contemptuous smile:
“Too bad… you didn’t get out alive~”
Having said that,
she disgustedly brushed off her clothes as if she had been sullied by something.
She was completely different from the fragile, clingy image just moments before.
…
Thud!
A muffled sound.
Su Zhan crashed heavily onto a flat surface, the massive impact nearly displacing his internal organs and sending searing pain through his bones as if they had been scattered.
“Ugh…”
Su Zhan groaned in pain, dazed and seeing stars from the fall.
Fortunately, the drop did not seem too great, and his current constitution as a Medium-risk Tenth Stage far exceeded that of ordinary people. Though agonized, he had not suffered fatal injuries.
Su Zhan shook his dizzy head and struggled to push himself up, blankly looking around.
The first thing that met his eyes was a gray-white mist canopy.
He knew this scene well;
he had no idea how long he had stayed in the Mist World.
Su Zhan looked down at the ground under his feet.
It was red tiles, now smashed to pieces from his impact.
The concrete rooftop had also cracked slightly where he hit.
And he was standing on the roof of a building!
Su Zhan’s gaze passed over the rooftop to look down.
A blue-and-white teaching building, a playground with a basketball hoop, campus greenery.
A noisy clamor came from a distance.
The building layout… was clearly a school.
He was back!
He had really returned to Blue Star!
And a mist incident was happening here, confirming his guess.
Su Zhan frantically searched for more evidence.
Soon, he saw the large slogan painted on the teaching building wall not far away…
“Diligent and Rigorous, Seeking Truth and Innovating.”
It was written in Daxia language!
This was Daxia!
He had really… come back!
Elation surged through Su Zhan.
He subconsciously reached to touch his face.
His hair had grown to shoulder length.
It was greasy and matted, smeared with unknown filth.
A coarse, unkempt beard covered his face.
It too was filthy.
In the Mist World,
Su Zhan had been unwilling to cut them.
Only the length of that hair had been his sole measure of time.
Too long… far too long…
Long enough that he had almost lost the concept of time, forgotten the scent of sunlight, forgotten the noise of human voices.
Every day had been traversing the omnipresent mist.
Dead silence, gray-white, perilous.
Walking numb, nerves always taut.
Loneliness and pressure enough to drive any sane person mad!
Su Zhan had survived until now purely by a stubborn, unwilling-to-die obsession.
And now… all of that was finally over!
He had returned alive!
Tears burst uncontrollably from his eyes!
At first they only trickled, then turned into a stifled sob, and finally became a full, keening wail!
Su Zhan slumped on the rooftop tiles and cried with every ounce of strength, letting all the suffering pour out through his tears.
Tears washed the grime from his face, leaving streaks of dirt.
He paid no heed and cried his heart out, feeling the long-lost sensation of being alive.
After an unknown amount of time, his cries gradually subsided into intermittent sniffles.
Su Zhan wiped his face hard, staring at the marks of tears mixed with dirt on his palm.
He then split into a smile that looked worse than his crying face.
Utterly genuine.
Back.
He was finally back.
Su Zhan sat on the roof, feeling the coolness of the tiles through his thin clothes.
It helped him stabilize after such intense emotional upheaval.
His tears dried, and his excitement slowly calmed.
Su Zhan inhaled several deep breaths of air that belonged to Blue Star.
It carried a hint of gunpowder and blood.
Returning did not mean safety.
On the contrary, the real challenge had only just begun.
He knew very clearly that, in the estimation of Daxia’s upper echelons, “Su Zhan” should already be dead in the Mist World.
That was the premise enabling him to survive.
If those people found out he had not only survived but returned alive, what awaited him would be a fate far worse than death.
The secret he carried was enough for those bigshots to unhesitatingly use every measure to eliminate him.
With his current strength, he could not stand against a national machine.
“Su Zhan is dead.”
Su Zhan said softly to himself, “From now on, I must hide completely and live under a brand-new identity.”
Saying that out loud felt strange.
Su Zhan had not spoken for too long in the Mist World.
Now his speech sounded a bit off and stuttered.
That would be too suspicious.
Su Zhan forced a smile, never having expected that his first task after returning to Daxia would be fixing his stilted speech.
He cautiously stuck his head out and observed the campus battlefield below again.
The situation was an utterly one-sided slaughter.
Snake-Tailed Beasts rampaged across the campus, slaughtering panicked students and teachers.
Several Aberrants who were clearly members of the Transcendence Society were mixed in among them.
And the surrounding Mist Creatures paid them no mind, occasionally even avoiding them.