“Mi Jia… Ranran?”
I woke up in a sweat. When I opened my eyes, I found myself still in the car. When I met Nalin’s narrow, blood-red eyes, my heart jolted in shock, and I felt dazed.
Seeing the person before me again felt as if a lifetime had passed.
Cold fingers gently caressed my cheek, and my tightly clenched heart twitched. With a cry of “Wah,” I buried my face in his chest, wrapping my arms tightly around his neck, sobbing uncontrollably, “Nalin!”
“I’m here,” he whispered, his voice trembling as he gently stroked my back, seeming flustered. He lifted my chin, forcing me to meet his gaze. “How much do you remember? What have you recalled?”
I couldn’t stop crying and just hugged his neck and sobbed. How scared I was of his bloodshot eyes was how much I felt heartbroken now. It was only at this moment that I realized how cruel it was to him when I was afraid and running away from him and calling him the Corpse God Lord.
“I remember everything now. I’m sorry… Nalin… wuwuwu…”
“Do you remember everything?” He cupped my face, his forehead resting against mine. “Then why apologize to me? It’s me who owes you an apology. If I hadn’t personally handed you over to my mother, you wouldn’t have… met such a tragic end at her hands. I’m sorry. I’m the one who should be apologizing.”
I shook my head and hugged his neck tightly. “I should have told you earlier! I should have told you, I shouldn’t have kept it from you. It’s all my fault… Nalin, I didn’t take that thousand gold coins, I didn’t abandon you. I took your blood, and when I went back to save my mother, my family was…”
“I know, I already know, there’s no need to say it.” He pulled me tightly into his arms, his fingers weaving into my hair, gathering my nape, gently massaging it, comforting me with tenderness.
His gentle comforting made me cry even harder, and I collapsed into his arms, crying so uncontrollably that I could barely catch my breath.
My head was pressed against his chest, resting on the cold, lifeless earth; yet, upon this barren, frozen land, a unique flower bloomed just for me, one that had not withered for centuries.
“Nalin…” I murmured his name, “I miss you, I miss you so much.”
His body trembled.
In the stillness of his chest, it seemed as though a sound had stirred.
But when I listened closely, it appeared to be quiet again, as if it were just my imagination.
I reached out in disbelief to search, but he grabbed my wrist.
“What are you touching around for?”
“It seems like,” I lifted my tear-filled eyes, “it seems like I heard your heartbeat.”
“Are you foolish? I’m not alive, it can’t be beating.” He gently touched the corner of my eye, wiping away my tears. I could no longer hold back, and, just like when I was fourteen in my past life, I pressed my lips to his.
The hand gripping the back of my neck stiffened, then tightened instantly, and my lips were sealed with a deep, forceful kiss. My heart, which had been hanging in the air, suddenly found its place, and I parted my lips, taking his into mine.
Though we had just kissed not long ago, this kiss now felt as if it had been separated by centuries, as though it had crossed the boundaries of life and death, only to be regained. In a daze, it felt as though we had returned beneath the camellia tree from that year, when we were still young, foolishly kissing each other.
I dared not think about it, yet I couldn’t stop myself from imagining how he, who had fallen into darkness after my soul departed, spent his days.
He doesn’t even sleep. In the snowy forests and mountains, does he spend the days in the dark cave, facing the lonely moon at night, counting the stars, enduring day after day, year after year?
Nalin, our sweet days were so brief. Will they be enough to sustain you through centuries of darkness, without a glimpse of daylight? Are you repeatedly chewing over the memories of those few months when we were young and the mere days after our reunion?
We kissed for a long time, until I could barely catch my breath, before finally parting our lips.
“Nalin, I want to know, what did you go through after falling into darkness? Those two ghost errands said that if I stayed for seven days without going with them, my soul would be scattered… But didn’t my soul already scatter? Then how could I be reborn? It’s because of what you did for me, isn’t it?”
He placed a kiss on my forehead, then fell silent for a moment before slowly speaking.
“After I fell into darkness, I summoned the soul of the madam from your family. She told me about the massacre of your family and also told me how you died in the holy temple that day.”
“From now on, I won’t hide anything from you anymore.” I hugged his neck, and scenes from both past and present flashed through my mind. When we met again in the forest months ago, his actions and words that had once confused me now became clear, I finally understood everything.
Because of a single moment of hesitation, we were separated by life and death, almost missing each other forever. After going around in circles, separated by who knows how many centuries, we were finally able to reunite. It truly is an unbelievable stroke of luck amid all the misfortune.
“Nalin, what happened next? Did you return to the palace?”
He nodded slightly.
“I returned and uprooted the remaining forces of the Tusheng Sect. I placed a curse on the surviving members, turning them and their families into the living dead, bound by the curse for generations to come. They are to be my slaves, and every few days, they must offer their heart’s blood to me. I made them live in perpetual fear.”
As he spoke each word, his expression became somewhat twisted and grim.
It wasn’t until today, when I recalled memories from my past life, that I realized the “Nashen” people living in the forest mountain stronghold weren’t actually a tribe at all. Those people weren’t even his kin. — In the ancient language of Guge, the term “Nashen” meant “heavily sinful, unforgiven.” It was the mark Nalin had branded onto these remaining Tusheng Sect followers and their descendants, the curse he had imposed on them.
He trapped them deep within the forest, and in doing so, he bound his own soul to them forever, trapping himself in that place, trapped in the past.
I gently touched his cheek, and his expression softened immediately, as if he feared frightening me.
“Nalin, I will never be afraid of you again, whether you have red eyes or blue eyes. In my eyes, you are still the Nalin I fell in love with back then. Let them go. I’m back now. Perhaps some of them deserve it, but I don’t want to see you forever trapped by the hatred of the past.”
He kissed the palm of my hand. “I’ve already let the children go, but the tribe leader and Sangbuluo cannot be spared.”
I nodded. Those two truly deserved to die.
“Then, what happened next? Shouldn’t I have been scattered to the winds?”
“After setting up a memorial tablet for you, I tried summoning your soul several times, but all attempts failed. However, I unexpectedly met your past life’s biological father — Tai Wu. You’ve seen him in the village. Do you remember him?”
Tai Wu?
My heart was shaken, and my nose felt hot and sour.
Tai Wu was actually my biological father? In my previous life, when I was young, I had always believed he was just my master. Later, after losing my memory and being rescued by him, I assumed he was merely my adoptive father.
I never expected that, in this life, upon our reunion, I wouldn’t even remember him. No wonder, when he looked at me, his gaze was always so strange, so sorrowful, and he repeatedly reminded me that he was trying to save me.
Seeing me silent and in tears, Nalin paused for a moment. “Did you have a deep bond with him?”
I nodded, sniffling. “Although he never acknowledged me as his biological son, whether he was teaching me as my tutor or during the ten years I lost my memory, he always cared for me. Please don’t keep him trapped in the village anymore. I want to bring him to the city and take good care of him.”
“Alright.” He wiped away my tears. “Don’t worry, though I kept him by my side, I never mistreated him. I did it to prevent him from experiencing the aging, sickness, and death of an ordinary person and to serve as a medium to find you. But with my current state and the need to feed on humans, he, like the Tusheng Sect’s sinners, fears me greatly. He always wants to escape, and I had no choice but to often intimidate him to sever his thoughts of fleeing.”
“Don’t scare him anymore, you must respect him.” I couldn’t bear it, so I punched his chest lightly. “And then? How did you make it possible for me to be reborn?”
“I… After failing to summon your soul, I waited for another hundred years. The more souls I consumed, the stronger I became. By chance, I received guidance from a wise master, and I killed my way to hell. I fought with the ghost official who governs life and death and forced him to change your fate. However, this method went against the will of heaven, and the ghost official could not control the time of your rebirth. He only knew that you would be born to your biological father by his own hand. So, I trapped him and those sinners in the village, waiting for your rebirth.”
“Wha-what?” I widened my eyes, unable to believe what I was hearing. “Born to him, personally, giving birth… What does that mean? He’s a man, how could he give birth to me?”
He clearly knew what I was imagining and explained, “A man carries a soul differently from a woman. It doesn’t show outwardly, and after the soul is born, it is nourished by blood for several days before gradually taking physical form. It’s precisely because it doesn’t show that I was momentarily careless and almost missed you in this life.”
“How could you miss it?”
His gaze darkened, and after a long silence, he finally spoke, “After modifying your fate, Tai Wu showed no signs of carrying the soul for many years. In my moment of despair, a transportation official I had released brought back a… young man who resembled you. At the time, I didn’t realize he was a spy sent by my mother, and I almost fell for it. Thankfully, I saw through it later. It seems that Tai Wu must have given birth to you at that time, and when I wasn’t paying attention, he used a transportation official, who had been bribed by my mother, to secretly send you away.”
“No wonder…” I recalled everything from that time and suddenly understood. It seemed that back then, the way I relentlessly pursued Nalin, I must have appeared to him like yet another spy, right?
Moreover, since his mother had sent someone to impersonate me twice, anyone would have been suspicious. It was probably later, when my behavior and my past life were so alike, that he began to waver and went to my old house to summon my soul.
“Tai Wu… Why did my father send me out of the village?”
“I don’t know either. It was only after recognizing you at your old house that I speculated about the situation, but I haven’t asked him yet. However, I guess it was probably out of a desire to protect you, and it just happened to give my mother an opening.”
I reflected on the little details of the past. No matter what, I couldn’t believe he would want to harm me.
“Ranran, I’m deeply sorry that I couldn’t raise you myself.”
“Try to see it from another angle,” I said softly. “That remote mountain forest was completely cut off from the world, no school, no internet, and if I wanted to paint, I had to gather my own pigments. Life was so inconvenient. And besides, if you had raised me, I might’ve ended up calling you ‘Daddy.’ How could we… ever be together then?”
“Dai de?”
“It’s… Father.”
He chuckled softly at my words and flicked my nose. “You really know how to comfort someone. If you really thought of me as your father, I’d naturally find a way to keep myself from coming near.”
The solution was, of course, obvious. I couldn’t help but imagine that if Nalin had raised me from a young age, I probably wouldn’t have kept my virginity by the time I reached adulthood.
“You’re blushing. What are you thinking?” His voice lowered as he gently caressed my cheek. The slightly rough surface of the bandages brushed against my skin, and I froze, then instinctively cupped his hand with both of mine.
“Is your injury alright? Is it serious?”
Nalin furrowed his brow slightly, curling his fingers a little. “It’s fine. In a little while, it will heal.”
I tightly hugged his waist, glancing out the window and noticing the car driving onto the coastal highway. It suddenly reminded me of another reason he had come. “By the way, Nalin, I don’t think you took the household register.”
He was amused by my words, the corner of his lips lifting in a smile. He gently flicked my nose, his tone full of affection. “Do you want to go back and get it? Are you finally willing to marry me?”
I nodded seriously.
—With the memories of my past life, I finally understood why he was so insistent on marrying me, not being able to marry me was a regret from his past life, a pain that would never fade, a wound he would carry forever.
“Mm, it’s fine even if we don’t go back yet. We can wait a few more days. By January, we’ll be able to get married using your ID card. But since you’re still undocumented, we’ll need to get you one first. I have an old classmate who can probably help. We can get you registered in a nearby village…”
“Anything you say.” Without waiting for me to respond, he gently pushed me back into the chair and kissed my earlobe. “Since you’ve agreed to marry me, what should you call me from now on?”
“Fu, Fu Lang…”
“What else?”
I knew what he wanted to hear, burying my face in his hair. “Laogong…”
He gripped the back of my neck, took a deep sniff of my breath, his chest and abdomen rising and falling. I sat on his lap and immediately felt his reaction clearly: “What should I do, Ranran? I want to eat you again…”
“Do you want to do it in the car?” I glanced at the driver in front of me, still a little uncomfortable, but the previous few times proved that this driver’s slave was indeed unconscious. No matter how Nalin tortured me, he didn’t change his expression, didn’t look sideways, and didn’t say a word. Seeing Nalin reaching for the armrest box, I knew he was going to take the boxes of condoms. My ears were hot, and I helped him find a box.
It was probably the first time that I was so proactive. Nalin stared at me, his red pupils darkened, and his hands slid from my spine to my waist. He was about to take off my pants when suddenly, there was a loud thunder above our heads.
I was startled and looked out the window. At that moment, heavy rain poured down. The big raindrops hit the glass and made crackling sounds. The car was hit by something and turned sideways, raising waves tens of meters high! Is the embankment of the coastal highway going to collapse? Is it a typhoon?
As soon as this thought flashed through my mind, a long white shadow suddenly passed by the side of the window. Nalin hugged me tightly and slammed the door on my side. At the same time, the whole car fell into the sea!
The violent and humid air swept around my body in an instant. When I came to my senses, I saw myself and Nalin suspended above a huge vortex, surrounded by the hurricane. Also affected were several cars that were driving on the coastal highway with us. They had been sucked into the vortex. The reason why we were not sucked in was obviously because of the countless black shadows that gathered together and stretched out their hands under Nalin’s feet. They were the thousands of ghosts devoured by him, guarding their corpse god lord.
“Nalin, help them!”
Nalin nodded and narrowed his eyes. Several black shadows dispersed and dived into the water to grab those who were about to drown and dragged them to the shore. However, these people could not see the ghosts in the water, and their screams that there was something in the water rang out one after another. I couldn’t help but be glad that they were only concerned with escaping and did not look up; otherwise, they might have been scared to death on the spot if they looked up.
However, it is not known whether there is anyone on the road who can see the scene inside the hurricane or not.
“Ah Ran…”
A familiar voice came from the sea, mixed with a mournful and sharp roar like a dragon’s roar.
That was Ming Luo’s voice. I looked down and found a long figure emerging from the center of the vortex. Ming Luo was dragging a long dragon or snake-like tail, and when I looked into those resentful eyes, I realized that Ming Luo was Naluo, whom I met in my previous life.
I don’t know if it was because he was suppressed by the ghosts under Nalin’s feet or for other reasons, but I saw him hovering in the vortex, just staring at us without launching any attack.
“I spared your life and broke the puppet spell she cast on you. You should have remembered what happened in your previous life, right? What are you still doing here?” Nalin held me in his arms, looking down with a cold gaze. “You still want to come and take him away from me once more?”
“I want to… come and see him again.”
I was stunned, the image of his death in his previous life flashing before me — coughing up blood, collapsing over my lifeless body, only to have his blood drained by that female demon. It turned out he had spent both his past and present lives under his mother’s control. He was truly pitiful. From the moment he was born until the day he died, he had never known true happiness.
His voice grew deep as he spoke, each word deliberate. “Do you have anything you want to say to him? I’m giving you the chance. If you don’t want to say it, I’d tell him myself.”
“Say what?” I asked but immediately remembered the words he had tried to say to me before he died in our past life, the words he never finished. Looking at Ming Luo, I saw him gazing up at me from a distance, as if he were silently holding something back. It was like when he watched me seek out Nalin in our youth, and just like when we first met in this life.
In the end, he lowered his eyelids, bowing his head as he spoke softly, “I’m sorry… It was me. I was the one who caused you two to be separated. I was the one who followed you, told the soldiers about your plan to run away with him, and led your family’s servants to find him. I even wore your clothes and pretended to be you, making him misunderstand.”
My head buzzed.
“If it weren’t for me summoning your family’s servants after your death and going to your old home to ask for answers, I probably wouldn’t have figured this out even now.” Nalin’s voice was close to my ear, every word heavy with suppressed anger and resentment. “I used to pity his frail health, secretly mixing my blood into his food to help him, but his illness was deliberately caused by my mother. Even my blood couldn’t heal him. I couldn’t let her know about this, nor could I let him know. In his eyes, I must have seemed like a cold, heartless brother, watching him suffer in pain every day without helping. That’s probably why he resented me and wanted to make things difficult for me. It was probably the reason he latched onto you in the first place… Anything I cared about, he had to take for himself, whether it was things, little pets, even my mother’s favor. I accepted that. But I never expected him to commit such a terrible act, causing so much harm to both of us. If it weren’t for him, you and I could have run off together in our youth, gone to see the sea, just like we once dreamed.”
I suddenly understood. No wonder he had been so eager to be close to me from the very beginning.
Hearing that, I shook my head. “Ming Luo, you shouldn’t hate Nalin. He saved you, I witnessed it with my own eyes. All this time, you’ve misunderstood your brother.”
“No,” Ming Luo suddenly looked up, “My feelings for you aren’t just because of him! Perhaps, in the beginning, they were, but later, when I saw you die in front of me, I finally understood… in this life, it’s not just that!”
“Whether it’s true or not, your meeting with him was always a ‘coincidence’ controlled by her. Your renewed desire for him is also a result of her manipulation. Now, I’ve broken the puppet curse on you. The choice is yours, continue to oppose me on her behalf, or let go of everything. It’s up to you to decide.”
Nalin interrupted his words, his large hand covering my face, as if afraid that Ming Luo might glance at me too long and stir up more resentment. I looked at Ming Luo through the gaps between his fingers. “Ah Luo, I forgive you…”
He froze for a moment, his expression showing disbelief.
“Just give us back the time that separated me from him. I only wish to spend the rest of my life with him.”
He slowly closed his eyes, and the rain grew heavier.
Yet the surrounding hurricane gradually calmed.
As Nalin carried me onto the beach, I glanced at the sea from afar. The figure in the rain also turned to look at me. Nalin, sensing it, turned his head as well, his gaze filled with the same compassion he had when he was young.
“Go. When the time comes, I will guide you there.”
…
