Chapter 513 - 256: "Missed Me?

Chapter 513: Chapter 256: "Missed Me?

Meanwhile.

At the Red King Mansion, the sky was a tranquil blue and the moon shone white. Wispy clouds, like veils of gauze, tugged at the heart.

Blushing, Feng Bei finished the "daily homework" Zheng Xiu had assigned her before he departed.

Homework had to be done with care.

The work of Skillful Hands had to be done slowly.

Feng Bei was not stupid.

She knew Zheng Xiu was doing this on purpose.

Deliberately making things difficult for her.

Deliberately tugging at her heartstrings.

But as she wiped, Feng Bei inexplicably found it a little thrilling.

To be honest, it wasn’t as if she hadn’t seen all of Zheng Xiu before.

In those ten dream-like years of marriage, she and Zheng Xiu had laid themselves bare and poured out their hearts to one another. There were no secrets between them.

But after the Cannibal Painting shattered and they returned to reality, Feng Bei always felt they could never go back to that ephemeral relationship.

Feng Bei always felt that there was a film between them. Because...

’Me.’

A faint chuckle echoed in Feng Bei’s mind.

’Or rather, you,’

’The you who has become Xie Luohe.’

Feng Bei quietly closed her eyes, listening to the grating "whispers" in her ear. She carefully tucked in Zheng Xiu’s sleeping robe. Watching his eyebrows, which would sometimes knit together and then relax, she couldn’t resist reaching out to smooth them.

In the dim candlelight, Feng Bei murmured softly, "Shut up."

"Xie Luohe died two hundred years ago."

"Xie Luohe never existed."

"There is only Feng Bei, living out a great dream of the Void."

’Heh,’ the whisper chuckled. ’Your words don’t match your heart.’

Feng Bei said no more, reaching out to gently caress Zheng Xiu’s cheek. Even now, Feng Bei didn’t understand why Zheng Xiu was the only person in the world who could ignore her "Omen." It felt like destiny, yet also like an ill-fated bond she couldn’t bring herself to either fully accept or reject.

She wanted to know "why." She wanted the "answer." But at the same time, Feng Bei worried that once she lifted this mysterious veil, if the "answer" was not as wonderful as she hoped, it would be better to have never known it at all.

It was precisely this hesitation that kept Feng Bei frozen in place.

"So be it."

Feng Bei smiled faintly. Like an obedient young wife, she rolled up her sleeves, picked up the basin of water, and was about to leave Zheng Xiu’s pleasure dungeon.

Suddenly.

In the dungeon, the two rows of oil lamps on the walls flickered eerily, then extinguished themselves without a breeze. The dungeon was plunged into pitch darkness.

CRASH!

The basin in Feng Bei’s hands fell at her feet, splashing water everywhere. She whipped her head around in the darkness. The Void had, at some unknown point, been filled with a thick ’liquid.’ With every breath Feng Bei took, it felt as if a giant boulder were pressing down on her chest.

Zheng Xiu, who just a moment ago had looked as peaceful as a sleeping baby, was now drenched in sweat, his face a mask of terror, as if he were suffering some inhuman torment.

Behind Zheng Xiu, the profound darkness silently twisted, spun, and compressed.

In the pitch-black darkness, Zheng Xiu seemed to be enveloped in an even more intense layer of "darkness." Though they were the same color, in Feng Bei’s eyes, they were two completely distinct shades.

Behind Zheng Xiu, an inky-black vortex had appeared out of thin air, like a doorway to the unknown.

Her expression tense, Feng Bei silently walked toward Zheng Xiu and leaned in to listen.

She could vaguely hear the young man’s anxious voice crying, "I don’t want it! I don’t want it!"

Feng Bei fell silent.

After a moment, Feng Bei smiled faintly and tucked her long hair behind her ear.

"You’re really such a handful."

Feng Bei calmly removed her gloves. Her figure blurred, and she stepped into the abyss without a moment’s hesitation. In that instant, her long ponytail stretched out taut and straight, like a spear driving ever forward.

「Shortly before Feng Bei stepped into the "abyss."」

Zheng Xiu was indeed caught in a strange crisis.

A critical moment.

He had just recently fused the Dan Demon and the Caged Sparrow, creating a brand-new "Anti-Aircraft Cannon" form. He’d fired a blast into the air, blowing Zhu’s Incarnation to smithereens.

But what he never expected was that this Incarnation of Zhu’s was actually a Mystic!

What he expected even less was that after he took out Zhu’s Incarnation, its Deceitful Object... actually dropped!

An Orchid Mystic bearing the Orchid Deceitful Object!

Deceitful Objects and Incarnations also required a certain ’compatibility.’ At the very least, if Zheng Xiu had a choice, he wanted to be picky.

If he didn’t have a choice, it at least had to be something a man could cultivate.

What kind of man cultivates the Orchid Path?

How could he even practice it?

The Path would be completely ruined.

He couldn’t possibly lower himself to work in his own establishment as... an Orchid, could he?

That was why, when his Prisoner Deceitful Object reacted faster than he did, its chains shooting out with a SWOOSH to grab the Orchid Deceitful Object, Zheng Xiu had shown such a terrified reaction.

"I don’t want it!"

In an instant, Zheng Xiu understood the critical issue. It wasn’t that being a tentacle monster was bad... but that cultivating a Path required one to embody its core essence. And this was a Path he could never practice! ℴ

If he really let Prisoner drag Orchid back, never mind his Main Body, this Incarnation of his would be completely ruined.

At the end of the Cannibal Painting incident, when Zheng Shan fused with the Painter’s Deceitful Object, memory fragments from the great Ghost Painter Gongsun Mo had flowed into Zheng Xiu’s own memory, leaving a certain impact on him. This showed that the influence between a Deceitful Object and a Mystic was mutual. The existence of Deceitful Objects was a double-edged sword—for example, Feng Bei’s "Omen" or the Monk’s "multiple personalities." Zheng Xiu still hadn’t figured out the reason for these side effects.

Just imagining the grotesque sight of a bunch of tentacles sprouting from his ass sent a chill down Zheng Xiu’s spine. He immediately yelled "No!" and turned to flee.

Right now, Zheng Xiu was cursing up a storm, hurling the most vicious insults he could think of at Zhu and his entire lineage. ’You’re the damn Night Lord,’ he seethed, ’a first-generation Mystic who’s lived for a thousand years! What in the world were you doing practicing the "Orchid" Path?!’