Chapter 74
"Huan Zheng!" she shouted, her voice no longer cold like ice, no longer flat like the surface of a morning lake, but loud, shattered—like a crystal glass falling onto marble and breaking into a thousand pieces that could never be put back together—her eyes, or rather, her tightly shut third eye, pulsing so fast, so fiercely, so impatiently that a greenish-gray light began to seep from the thin gap between her eyelids, like the Cancer plague awakening from its slumber upon sensing that its host was angry, that its host was jealous, that its host refused to share with anyone.
"Get away from his body right now! Release your embrace, release your licking, release everything you've pressed against him—or I will leave you here forever, in this artificial hell, with that madwoman who cannot control her desires, and you will never see me again, never hear my voice again, never feel the warmth of my hands again!"
Huan Zheng, hearing that outburst, did not respond.
He merely let out a long sigh, a sigh that sounded like someone who had just realized he would not be able to take his afternoon nap because two women were fighting over him as if he were a piece of meat in a market to be won by the highest bidder.
But before he could even open his mouth to calm the situation, the Singer moved first.
With an agility unexpected from a woman who just moments ago had been clinging tightly to his back, she spun her body, circling and turning like a ballet dancer displaying her skill, until in an instant she was already standing before Huan Zheng, face to face, at a distance so close that their breaths blended into one within the hot air of the artificial hell filled with the stench of sulfur and burning flesh, and her soft curves—which moments ago had been pressed against his back—now pressed against Huan Zheng's chest with deliberate softness, as if she were saying:
"Look, Huan Zheng. I will not step back. I will not surrender. I will not let that white-bandaged girl take you from me, no matter how loudly she shouts, no matter how much of the Cancer plague she threatens."
Fuuuh!!
"Huan Zheng," the Singer whispered, her voice no longer melodious as before, no longer laced with mockery or deliberately emphasized desire, but soft, gentle, like a lover whispering words of love into her partner's ear in the stillness of night, her blazing red eyes—which moments ago had glared sharply at Ling Xu like knives—now softened, dimmed, turned faint, like embers beginning to fade for lack of fuel, like a fire shrinking because there is nothing left to burn.
"I have waited for you far too long. I can't wait anymore. I don't want to lose you again. So let me do this—"
She did not finish her sentence, because she did not need to.
Her supple, pale hand—the same hand that once held the green flute whose melody could crack the sky, split the sea, and force a thousand cultivators to their knees—slowly rose, moving toward Huan Zheng's chin, her warm and gentle fingers touching his skin with a softness almost like affection, like a mother caressing her child's cheek upon waking, like a lover about to kiss her partner's lips for the first time after a long separation.
And then, with a slow, deliberate, dramatic motion, she drew Huan Zheng's chin closer to her lips, pulling his face toward hers, closing the distance between them inch by inch, millimeter by millimeter, until their breaths truly merged, until the warmth of their lips could be felt even without contact, until the boundary between "almost" and "already" became blurred, nearly meaningless—like the boundary between life and death for those who have died eleven times, like the boundary between love and hatred for those who have lost everything and then found something they never expected to find.
Huan Zheng, seeing the Singer's face draw ever closer, feeling the warmth of her breath against his tightly closed lips, feeling the pressure of her soft curves against his chest growing firmer as she leaned in, could only remain silent, unmoving, saying nothing, doing nothing but standing like a stone statue devoid of feeling, because he did not know what he should do.
To reject her would mean hurting a woman who had searched for him for thousands of years, to accept her would mean betraying Ling Xu who had died eleven times for him, and to remain silent would mean letting the two women fight over him like two crows fighting over a piece of rotten meat in the middle of the road, and he, Huan Zheng—The Lazy One, the king of sleep, the prince of a kingdom called drowsiness—had never been good at making difficult decisions, because making difficult decisions required energy, and energy was something he always conserved for sleeping, yawning, and scratching an itch that did not exist.
"That's enough!" Ling Xu cried, and before the words had fully faded from the ears of those who heard them, her light body—made so by abandoning everything she had built and choosing emptiness—had already shot forward, crossing the distance of several meters between her and Huan Zheng and the Singer in an instant, like an arrow released from the bow of anger, like lightning striking across a sky that never rains, like the Cancer plague that could never be stopped by anyone because it knew no mercy.
Her hand—which once could only mix herbs and dress wounds—now clenched into a fist, then thrust forward, pushing against the Singer's shoulder with undeniable force, a strength born from anger she had suppressed for years, from jealousy she had long denied, from the fear of losing the person who meant the most in her life, and that push, though not enough to send The Singer—one of the three Cultivation Wheels, a woman whose flute could crack the sky—flying, was enough to make her stagger backward several steps, releasing Huan Zheng's chin from her grasp, freeing her soft curves from his chest, releasing everything that made Ling Xu feel as though her world would collapse if those lips truly met.
"You—" The Singer began, her blazing red eyes now igniting once more with a fiercer flame than before, not from desire, but from anger, because the white-bandaged girl before her dared to push her, dared to disrupt the moment she had waited for thousands of years, dared to take Huan Zheng from her.
"How dare you—"
But Ling Xu did not listen.
She did not even turn to face the Singer, did not care about the woman's anger, did not care about whatever threats might come from her lips, because all her attention was now fixed solely on Huan Zheng—the lazy man still standing with that same indifferent expression, the man who had almost been kissed by another woman just moments ago, the man who—without her realizing it—had become the center of her entire universe, the center of everything she fought for, the center of everything that made her still want to live even when life itself felt like a punishment she had never asked for.
To be continued…