Fu Songcheng roughly knew what solution Yu Huaiting was about to propose, but until the very last moment, he didn’t want them both to suffer mutual destruction.
Countless thoughts flashed rapidly through his mind.
In the I Ching, a person’s core is “qi.”
The living have yang qi; the dead have yin qi.
The ashes of paper money were an extremely yin substance—it had blinded their perception as living people.
“Did your hand just touch the paper money’s ashes?” Fu Songcheng cut off Yu Huaiting’s proposal.
“Yes.” Yu Huaiting recalled. “When the paper money burned out, the ash fell on the back of my hand. It was somewhat cold.”
Found it!
That should be the “eye” of the illusion’s formation!
“Give me that hand.” Fu Songcheng ordered.
Yu Huaiting groped in the darkness and held out the back of his hand stained with ash.
Fu Songcheng didn’t hesitate. He opened his mouth and bit down hard on Yu Huaiting’s index finger.
Hiss—
The fingers are connected to the heart. The pain made Yu Huaiting suck in a sharp breath.
Fu Songcheng smeared Yu Huaiting’s blood across the back of his hand, covering the speckled traces of ash.
Warm blood, carrying vivid vitality, was smeared over that ice-cold paper ash mark.
A living person’s fresh blood is an extremely yang substance.
Pain is the strongest anchor connecting to reality.
The instant the blood covered the paper ash, Fu Songcheng and Yu Huaiting simultaneously heard a furious roar—gloomy and hoarse—as if something invisible had been torn apart beside their ears.
Immediately after, the cramped, oppressive feeling around them vanished in an instant.
The distorted sensation of weightlessness struck again.
With a dull thud.
They crashed heavily back onto the soft bridal bed.
Above them, the red candles still burned quietly, casting a dim yellow light.
…
Elsewhere, the Lin residence.
The cold, yin aura had nearly condensed into something solid.
Lin Feng sat in a dust-covered chair, facing that black-and-white portrait.
His face was pale to the point of near transparency; on his left cheek was the scar Yu Huaiting’s cross dart had carved.
A gust of yin wind swept past, and the black-and-white figure in the portrait twisted once.
Then, a semi-transparent soul drifted lightly out of the frame, landing before Lin Feng.
It was his [Lover], Chen Yu.
In stark contrast to the gloomy, terrifying surroundings, Chen Yu’s face wore a carefree, brilliant smile—even though his current state was that of a ghost with no physical body.
“Aiya, that was close, so close—almost got scorched by the extreme yang blood qi!”
Chen Yu patted his semi-transparent chest and let out a long sigh, his tone full of regret. “That player called Fu Songcheng reacted way too fast! He actually covered the bronze mirror on the dressing table.”
“Otherwise, while they were trapped in the illusion, I could have attacked their real bodies through the mirror. What a shame!”
As Chen Yu spoke, he habitually leaned in to wrap his arms around Lin Feng’s neck the way he always did.
Yet the instant he drew close to Lin Feng, he suddenly paused, finding something odd. He frowned and retreated to Lin Feng’s side.
Lin Feng took it all in, his gloomy eyes flickering once, and sighed softly.
“It’s fine.”
Lin Feng’s voice was low and hoarse, yet quite pleasant. “We’ve already gained the first-move advantage.”
“But we failed.” Chen Yu sighed, sitting cross-legged in midair, propping his chin on his hand as he looked at Lin Feng. “We tipped our hand and startled the snake.”
Lin Feng’s gaze toward Chen Yu was gentle and warm. “We’re in the dark; they’re in the light. What we need to do is keep searching for the instance’s story fragments, then launch the next assault. They clearly still don’t understand the rules.”
Hearing this, Chen Yu nodded hard—clearly a ghost, yet visibly cheerful. “You’re right! I can pass through walls now—they definitely can’t find things as fast as I can!”
Seeing Chen Yu’s full-throttle enthusiasm, Lin Feng twitched the corner of his mouth and reached out to pat his lover’s hair through the air.
“Be careful. Don’t let the wandering vengeful spirits in the system discover you,” Lin Feng instructed.
“Got it!”
Chen Yu waved. His body turned into a wisp of green smoke, rapidly piercing through the closed wooden door and vanishing into the dark corridor.
Until he confirmed Chen Yu had gone far, Lin Feng’s taut spine finally relaxed slightly.
He stared at his own palm—a scorched black mark just burned into it by the system’s punishment mechanism.
Deep in his mind, the system’s cold notification seemed still to echo:
[Warning: Entrapment Formation failed. Faction confrontation backlash triggered.]
[Punishment settlement: 23% of the love progress value mortgaged by you and your lover “Chen Yu” has been deducted.]
Chen Yu’s movement just now—wanting to embrace him but instinctively pulling his hand back—made Lin Feng truly feel the terror of this instance.
Even emotions could be manipulated?
This mortgaging, and the 23% of Chen Yu’s love value exchanged for the failed assault opportunity, sounded a warning bell for him.
“Next assault,” Lin Feng gritted his teeth, “must be a one-strike kill.”
…
Inside the bridal chamber, the red candles flickered.
Thud—
The instant Fu Songcheng and Yu Huaiting fell onto the bed, both couldn’t help but gasp for air.
The lingering aftermath of escaping death left their minds briefly blank.
The suffocating, chilling oppression around them had vanished without a trace, replaced by the faint wax-oil smell of burning red candles and the vivid, warm body heat of each other.
Yu Huaiting lay on the red brocade quilt scattered with peanuts and longans, his brows tightly knitted.
He raised his right hand. The bite mark on his index finger was still seeping blood, mixed with the smeared bloodstains on the back of his hand—a rather sorry sight.
“You really didn’t hold back with that bite.”
Yu Huaiting wasn’t afraid of pain, but he still looked at Fu Songcheng with a hint of reproach.
Fu Songcheng was propping himself up to sit.
A trace of Yu Huaiting’s fingertip blood still lingered at the corner of his mouth. Under the dim, flickering candlelight, that crimson lent his otherwise refined face an eerie, bewitching allure.
Had this been right after entering the instance, or before the illusion erupted, Fu Songcheng would have teased him a bit, even used this ambiguous posture to tangle with Yu Huaiting for a while.
But now, he had no such romantic thoughts at all.
Having struggled back from the edge of life and death, Fu Songcheng’s reason gradually returned.
He took a deep breath, quickly adjusting his breathing rhythm, his gaze sharply sweeping this seemingly calm bridal chamber.
“A faction confrontation instance.”
Fu Songcheng spat out these words, his tone certain.
The teasing look on Yu Huaiting’s face also reined in. He propped himself up and sat, his eyes turning grave. “We underestimated them.”
“The enemy is in the dark; we’re in the light.” Fu Songcheng turned and looked at Yu Huaiting, his brows tightly locked. “They also have attack methods. Their attack just failed, so they’ll surely lie low and look for the next opportunity. Every step from here on out—no letting our guard down.”
His words were extremely serious—a warning to Yu Huaiting, and a warning to himself.
No more playing around. This was a life-and-death hunt between player and player.
Fu Songcheng forced himself into combat-ready mode.
But…
But his gaze kept drifting toward Yu Huaiting uncontrollably.
He saw Yu Huaiting sitting on the bright red bridal bed, his collar slightly open from the earlier fall, revealing a stretch of cold-white collarbone.
He could even clearly feel that his own heartbeat frequency seemed to be inexplicably syncing with Yu Huaiting’s breathing rhythm.
Something’s wrong.
Way too wrong.
His concern, his attention toward Yu Huaiting—it was too much.
Inside the instance—proactively covering himself with the veil to block his vision, responding to Yu Huaiting’s kiss—these were not reactions he should have had!
Even if he admitted he didn’t resist contact with Yu Huaiting, Fu Songcheng’s reason and his consistent way of doing things would never allow him to put feelings first amid a crisis.
How could this be?
Did he really like this youth before him to such a degree?
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