Crying, she tried to struggle free from the youth’s icy restraints, but nothing went as she wished. She could only let his sticky blood stain her fingers ceaselessly.
Why did it have to be like this?
Why must it be like this?
Just as she cried until nearly dizzy, she suddenly heard the youth chuckle lightly by her ear, then was pulled into an embrace full of bloody scent. His lips pressed hard against her forehead. “I’ll let you go, Xin Yi. I’ll let you both go.”
“Don’t cry. I won’t force you to like me anymore.”
Xin Yi looked up and stared at him blankly with her cry-swollen eyes.
For a moment, she thought Xie Shuo was deceiving her again and that it couldn’t be this easy to compromise. Until he repeated his words and made one last request. “Tonight is the fifteenth full moon. Accompany me to the courtyard to look at the moon. By tomorrow morning, I’ll let you both leave.”
When she was held and seated on the rooftop, Xin Yi’s brows and eyes were still full of daze.
She recalled that in the previous Small World, it seemed similar too. On New Year’s Eve night, wrapped in fox fur, she huddled in the youth’s arms, overlooking the lights of the entire Bian Capital together.
Back then, she had said she hoped he could be happy.
But now… Clearly a matter from the previous world, which she thought she had long forgotten, yet it was as clear as if it were yesterday.
The moonlight was bright and clear, spilling over the ground.
Xin Yi quietly leaned in the youth’s arms, accompanying him to watch the moon all night. By the next morning, Xie Shuo indeed kept his promise, sending them to the alley entrance, prepared to let them leave.
Xin Yi sent Xi Lingyi ahead first, then stayed alone to bid Xie Shuo farewell. The youth had been somewhat worried at first, enduring the pain of his broken wrist bone and saying he wanted to stay with her, as if afraid Xie Shuo would do something excessive to her.
But under Xin Yi’s gradually indifferent gaze, he still chose to leave reluctantly.
By now, everything was about to settle.
The Melodramatic Transmigration System was also urging her to extricate herself quickly, telling her to seize the time and not delay too long.
Unfortunately, just as she opened her mouth, her mind suddenly went blank and dizzy.
Not only that, even her body seemed controlled by something, no longer obeying her will.
He heard a sigh by his ear. Xie Shuo leaned down to hold her, while stuffing the dagger from last night back into her hand.
He tempted her. “Go ahead. Didn’t you want to do this a long time ago?”
Xin Yi finally understood what Xie Shuo wanted to do.
In the original plotline, he had taken revenge by putting a gu on Chu Chu, making her kill the person she loved most with her own hands. But now, the one under the gu had become her.
“What are you waiting for?”
The youth stretched out his ice-cold fingers to lightly touch her cheek. The corners of his downcast eyes were flushed red, and his tone already carried a hint of madness. “Kill me, and you’ll be completely free.”
He exposed his vital points to her without reservation.
Even as their lips fused together, he was guessing where she would stab—his heart or his throat.
Then Xie Shuo heard the squishing sound of the dagger plunging into a chest. The scent of blood filled his nose, yet he felt no pain.
Xie Shuo blankly opened his eyes and saw the woman’s agonized, scattered pupils. Because they were so close, a few drops of warm blood even splattered onto his jade-white jaw.
At the same time, the golden finger that dispels the gu technique and the pain-blocking effect activated together.
The moment Xin Yi collapsed into his arms, the prompt to withdraw from the current world also rang in his mind. Before she completely lost consciousness, she seemed to feel the youth’s panicked tears smashing onto her cheek.
Azure Parting Street bustled with carriages and horses, prosperous and peaceful.
This should have been an utterly ordinary day, but later, in the eyes of the Capital City’s residents, it became a day like a nightmare.
Because countless people among them personally witnessed a monster covered in scales, half-human and half-snake.
But the youth no longer cared at all. He held the woman’s gradually cooling corpse and walked dazedly down the main street.
His snake tail had fully manifested. He showed no reaction to the frightened screams along the way, utterly indifferent to being regarded as a demonic evil by the crowd.
He went to the embroidery shop and asked the shopkeeper to buy a wedding dress, scaring the shopkeeper so much that he nearly wet himself. He changed Xin Yi into it behind the screen.
He changed into one himself, not caring at all if someone went to report it or called the imperial guards.
Then he went to a street shop and bought a phoenix crown and step-shake, using his bloodstained fingers to tie a love knot for her.
Unfortunately, his fingers were somewhat stiff, and it took him a good long while to tie it.
Finally, when he walked onto Azure Parting Street again, Xiao Cheng Ce arrived with the imperial guards and archers.
Upon seeing the youth’s dazed monstrous form, he felt shock and fear, along with extremely complicated emotions.
He naturally hated Xie Shuo, and it was a mix of hatred and fear.
That night, the assassins he sent failed to kill the youth. Instead, they acted like they were under a gu, going mad and hacking his left leg. Even after healing later, he could only become a lame general pitied by others.
And ever since that day, when he stumbled upon their illicit affair by the lake and was bitten by the gu insect Xie Shuo released.
He could no longer get hard with Chu Chu. Even with his beautiful concubine in his arms, he could only sleep in separate beds… How could he not hate!
The street fell deathly silent. The archers had the snake-tailed youth on Azure Parting Street completely surrounded.
Xiao Cheng Ce, limping on his injured leg, sat astride his horse.
At his side was Chu Chu, who had insisted on coming along. Unlike Xiao Cheng Ce, however, she actually felt that this was not unexpected.
This was right.
This was what should happen, because no one would love a monster like him.
He had been seduced by Bai Xinyi and fallen for her one-sidedly.
Ending up like this was what he deserved.
Monsters did not deserve love.
His affection had driven her to death.
Perhaps the imperial guards and archers gave the onlookers courage. Someone began throwing things at the youth.
It started with rotten vegetables and eggs, then someone hurled a red-hot branding iron at his tail. The snake tail instantly charred red. But the youth didn’t even dodge, as if he had lost the will to resist.
He thought, if Xin Yi despised him and hated him.
Then if everyone treated him like a monster and hunted him down with spittle, would she be a little happier? Would there be a chance she could wake up?
Chu Chu naturally noticed something off about him. She felt Xie Shuo was either already mad or on the verge of madness.
She thought for a moment, then leaned close to Xiao Cheng Ce’s ear
and said something.
Xiao Cheng Ce frowned in confusion, so Chu Chu told him to trust her this once.
Soon after, a brand-new wedding sedan draped in red silk was carried over and placed in the middle of the street.
Chu Chu stroked the broken fingers hidden in her sleeve, her eyes full of hatred. She raised her voice and shouted at the youth surrounded by archers. “On the day of the grand wedding, the bride can’t be without a wedding sedan. If you want to get married, exchange your snake core for it.”
Then she threw a dagger at him. She wanted to see if this little monster was truly mad or faking it.
In the end, Xie Shuo stared at the sedan for a long time, then actually picked up the dagger and dug out his own snake core.
Blood kept pouring from his mouth as he crawled into the sedan while holding the woman in the wedding dress. Unfortunately, his snake tail was too huge, and the sedan’s edge too narrow.
Chu Chu spoke again to remind him. “I’ve said it before—no one would like a monster, not even Bai Xinyi. If you want to marry her, how can you do it in snake form?”
“A Shuo, cut off the snake tail, and you can become a normal person.”
“She will love you. Don’t you want her to love you?”
At these words, the street fell deathly silent again. Then, under everyone’s gaze, they really saw the youth, as if bewitched, take the dagger and stab his own tail.
It didn’t sever completely, but the sight of snake scales flipping up with flesh, blood, and sinew was still too cruel and horrifying. Some faint-hearted people had already vomited from nausea. The imperial guards’ hands trembled on their bows and arrows. Xiao Cheng Ce was completely stunned.
But Chu Chu, amid her fast-derived pleasure, vaguely understood.
Because Xie Shuo had never received true affection. A monster like him, once he liked someone, would like them with his life.
What a pity—no one cared about his filthy, ugly heart.
His mother had once died from stupidity, and now he would die the same way.
It was said that snake cores from the Snake Clan had the power to bring the dead back to life and regrow flesh and bone. Her father’s severed arm had regrown that way.
Right now, she had only lost a few fingers, so it should be even less of a problem.
Unfortunately, her expectations fell through. Because neither the snake core nor the snake tail—the youth had no intention of leaving them for her.
Inside the wedding sedan, after confirming Xin Yi would never wake again, Xie Shuo held her shoulders and cried and laughed.
In the moment before countless arrows pierced the sedan, he released countless rouge white-footed spiders, which swallowed both their bodies together.
The instant the wedding sedan caught fire, Chu Chu also understood.
This thing called the Rouge Gu was said to allow lovers who died together after being devoured by it to become husband and wife in the next life. Moreover, after the rouge spiders drank their fill of blood and flesh, their bodies would burst like flames, incinerating everything completely.
But that was just a legend. To think he actually believed it!
However, it was too late for regrets.
The wedding sedan, along with the two people inside, had already turned to flying ashes and been reduced to nothing. No one could separate them anymore, because not even a decent bone remained.
After that day, the wine shops and teahouses in the Capital City gained a new strange tale—about the young lady of Bai Mansion and that youth from the Miao Frontier.
But it was no romantic tale of talented scholars and beauties, because even the rumors behind them were unsavory.
No one thought they loved each other, and no one thought they should be together. It was just the frail, pitiable general’s original wife, coveted for her beauty by a monster, who in the end wanted to forcibly claim her but drove her to death.
Some sighed for the Bai Mansion young lady, thinking her fate was unlucky to be targeted by the snake demon. Fortunately, the general had avenged her in the end.
Only Xi Lingyi, sitting in the teahouse listening to the storyteller, shed a tear. Because that night outside the palace walls, he had seen the drunken woman cling to the youth’s neck, her posture intimately attached and reliant.
He knew the “Bai Mansion young lady” certainly did not hate the youth, and would not wish for his death.
If she knew, she might be the saddest one.