Shen Que was jolted awake by an eerie sound, like countless fingernails scraping against a stone wall, drawing nearer and nearer until it seemed to rasp right beside his ear.
Shen Que abruptly opened his eyes and sat up. The campfire had gone out at some point, and everything was pitch black. His wrist suddenly felt lighter as something slipped free and slid down. He lifted it up and, after a careful look, realized it was the silver chain Sheng Qixiao used to tie his hair. Shen Que sighed in relief and subconsciously looked beside him, only to find the space empty.
Sheng Qixiao is gone?!
Shen Que’s heart leaped in surprise. He quickly lowered his voice and called Sheng Qixiao’s name several times but received no response.
Where did he go?
Shen Que had no time to think; he rolled off the stone bed at once, planning to go search for him. However, as soon as his foot touched the ground, a chilling sensation climbed up his pant leg. Shen Que couldn’t help but shiver, and the half-step he had taken was instantly retracted.
It was then that he saw the ground carpeted with tightly packed brownish-black insects, their smooth, hard shells faintly gleaming with a multicolored sheen in the dim light.
Shen Que swallowed hard, took a half-step back, and plopped down onto the stone bed. The insects kept surging ahead with a soft, scraping rustle, spreading across the entire ground. The sound alone was enough to make Shen Que feel so nauseated he nearly retched.
“Sheng Qixiao!”
Shen Que yelled out in annoyance, his brow furrowing involuntarily. Where the hell did he go in the middle of the night instead of sleeping, leaving him alone to face a mountain cave full of bugs?
His shout rebounded through the cave again and again, each echo growing weaker until it vanished entirely. The only response was the incessant rustle of insect shells grinding and pressing against one another.
Shen Que gritted his teeth and randomly kicked away a few black insects that had already climbed onto the stone bed and said, “Get lost!” But it was futile. More and more insects climbed onto the edge of the bed, practically surrounding him.
A sharp stinging pain came from his calf. The black insect had somehow climbed in along his pant leg. A wave of disgust immediately washed over Shen Que’s heart. He forced himself to endure the discomfort and grabbed the insect in his hand. Even through a layer of fabric, he could clearly feel its struggles.
Shen Que forcefully closed his palm. The moment the black insect was crushed, a sticky liquid mixed with a broken shell smeared his hand.
Shen Que shook his arm, sending the dead black insect back to its companions. It was then that he noticed the other black insects were pushing and shoving each other, like marching in place, no longer crawling forward.
Could the scent of their dying companion have deterred them?
Soon, Shen Que dismissed this speculation—what they feared turned out to be Sheng Qixiao’s outer robe spread beneath him.
With no time to ponder the whys and wherefores, Shen Que suppressed the countless conjectures welling up in his mind, focusing only on escaping quickly. He grabbed the outer robe, wrapped himself tightly from head to toe, and rushed outside.
The hard-shelled insects, which had been swarming and attempting to climb onto him, immediately scattered away as if they had seen a natural predator.
He bolted out of the cave in a panic. Before he could even steady his breathing, he spotted Sheng Qixiao beneath a large tree, kneeling on one knee with his back turned, utterly still. Bathed in moonlight, he looked like a statue carved out of flesh and blood.
“Sheng Qixiao!” For the moment, Shen Que couldn’t be bothered to keep up the gentle facade he had so carefully maintained earlier, his mind fixed solely on uncovering the truth. “What did you run out here for? You didn’t answer when I called. You don’t know how scary it was just now. What exactly was that black beetle thing…”
However, no matter how he shouted, Sheng Qixiao remained completely motionless.
Mixed in the night wind was a faint, almost imperceptible scent of blood.
Something was wrong.
Shen Que gradually stood upright, unconsciously holding his breath as he moved with careful, quiet steps to circle around and stop in front of Sheng Qixiao. He noticed that Sheng Qixiao’s eyes were tightly shut, his lips ghostly pale, and despite his mouth being firmly closed, blood continued to seep out. His breathing was already extremely weak.
Shen Que was stunned for two seconds, then his scalp prickled. He reached out to pull him with trembling hands, but before he could even apply any force, Sheng Qixiao slumped onto him like a landslide, his icy forehead barely pressing against Shen Que’s neck.
His heart suddenly skipped a beat. Shen Que instinctively raised his hand to push him away, but halfway through the movement, he changed direction, letting Sheng Qixiao lean on him, and grabbed his arm to pull it closer to his eyes instead.
Sheng Qixiao’s hands were bound by a thumb-thick red vine. The other end of the vine was hidden among the flowers and grass covering the ground, extending to who knows where.
Shen Que didn’t dare to delay. He lifted one shoulder to support Sheng Qixiao so he wouldn’t completely fall, and with difficulty fumbled for the small dagger he carried, then cut the vine.
The layer of red on the vine’s surface came off with a swipe, slippery yet adhering to Shen Que’s skin like glue, it was Sheng Qixiao’s fresh blood.
Why? Shen Que rubbed the sticky liquid in his palm, his thoughts spinning as he tried to piece together everything that had just happened. What exactly had taken place?
Where did those insects come from, why was Sheng Qixiao here, and why had he turned into this state?
Suddenly, something brushed against his skin, it was eyelids. “Shen Que.” The warm breath whispered over the hollow of his neck, sending an involuntary shiver through him. Sheng Qixiao’s voice was low and deep, revealing a strange allure, “You saved me again. How should I thank you?”
He raised his head. His amber-clear eyes had somehow turned empty blood-red. Shen Que couldn’t help but gasp, and his whole body leaned backward. A cold large hand firmly supported his back, followed by a sharp pain in the back of his neck. Shen Que instantly lost consciousness before collapsing into Sheng Qixiao’s arms.
Sheng Qixiao bent down and held Shen Que tightly before lowering his head to kiss him on the brow. The red in his pupils gradually faded.
“Are you awake?”
Shen Que rubbed the back of his neck and slowly sat up, groggily opening his eyes. Sheng Qixiao was sitting steadily on the edge of the stone bed while watching him calmly.
His stalled brain slowly rebooted. Shen Que subconsciously looked at Sheng Qixiao’s eyes. There was not a trace of darkness hidden in his clear pupils: “Your eyes are better?”
“What?” Sheng Qixiao showed a confused expression, tilting his head in bewilderment.
“I woke up in the middle of the night yesterday and found you missing. The whole cave was full of black insects. I ran out to find you and saw you tied under a tree, and your eyes had turned red.”
Sheng Qixiao listened quietly without interruption. Only after Shen Que finished did he lean over and use the back of his hand to check his forehead temperature: “Are you sick? Or did you have a nightmare? We both slept well in the cave last night.”
“How is that possible? You were bleeding a lot; my hand was even covered in it.” Shen Que shook his head. How could he confuse a dream with reality? He still remembered the sticky sensation. He opened his palm, but there was no trace of blood at all.
“Shen Que…” Sheng Qixiao wanted to say something, but Shen Que didn’t listen at all. He rolled off the bed and jumped down to look for the black beetles. He remembered how he had taken long strides the night before, crushing a few slow, clumsy insects underfoot. Surely, there should be traces left behind.
But he searched around and found nothing.
Could it really have been a dream? Shen Que looked down at the ground. How could a dream be so real? But if it wasn’t a dream, why would Sheng Qixiao lie to him?
“Sheng Qixiao, was it really a dream?” Shen Que’s mind was a bit confused. Refusing to give up, he ran out of the cave to look for the traces of the vines he had cut under the tree but still found nothing.
The whole valley was the same as it had been during the day yesterday, quiet and tranquil, with clear pool water and a soft breeze.
“Shen Que, stop looking.” Sheng Qixiao stood at the cave entrance watching Shen Que. “You don’t have a fever, and you haven’t lost your mind either; you just had a nightmare. I told you before that, it can be very dangerous here at night and can cause illusions. I thought you would be okay next to me.”
Shen Que turned to gaze at Sheng Qixiao. After a moment, he slowly stood up. Sheng Qixiao told him to stop looking, and he genuinely stopped searching. He still didn’t believe everything last night was a dream, but if Sheng Qixiao had made up his mind to lie to him, he must have already cleaned up all the evidence; otherwise, why would he be so certain?
“Maybe I really was groggy from sleep.” Shen Que put on a smile, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes. “You don’t mind, do you, Qixiao?”
Sheng Qixiao also smiled. His handsome eyebrows and eyes became like a clear, sweet pool of water, yet hiding an unfathomable danger.
After a simple wash-up, the two prepared to set off back to the stockaded village after eating some dry rations.
Shen Que was still thinking about the murals on the wall, so he lied, claiming he had left something behind, and asked Sheng Qixiao to wait outside the cave while he rushed back to quickly take a few photos with his phone.
Even during the daytime, the light inside the cave was poor. Shen Que turned on the flash, and a metallic gleam, unique to metal, flashed in a crack in the stone.
A peculiar detachment flickered in Shen Que’s eyes as he expressionlessly bent down to pick it up. It was Sheng Qixiao’s silver hair chain.
It was, without a doubt, the one that had slipped off his wrist in the ‘dream’ last night. As for how it moved from the stone bed to the crack in the floor, he probably needed to ask those insects.
“What are you doing? Why aren’t you coming out yet?” Sheng Qixiao’s voice came from behind him.
Shen Que had already given up the idea of getting to the bottom of things. Why bother meticulously distinguishing between the real and the fake?
However, he still couldn’t help but sigh. Sheng Qixiao’s talent for lying was truly insufficient, offering such a big flaw on a silver platter. Luckily, he ran into him, who understood how to leave room for both of them. If it were someone else, he would have been exposed long ago.
Shen Que stood up, smiling as he handed over the silver chain in his hand, speaking as if seeking praise: “I found your hair accessory on the ground. How will you thank me?”
Sheng Qixiao stared at Shen Que without blinking while trying to find something in his expression.
“I will help you cure your companion.”
“Thank you.” Shen Que lifted an eyebrow, his eyes shining with gratitude, and his smile broadened even further. He patted the non-existent dust off his trousers: “Let’s go.”
Sheng Qixiao gathered the silver chain into his palm, holding it tightly, sensing the lingering warmth left by Shen Que.
He knew Shen Que didn’t believe his account. He detected the sarcasm in that word of thanks and the smile on his face, yet pretended not to know.
Turning around, the smile on Shen Que’s face completely vanished. With his back to Sheng Qixiao, he walked outward while asking casually, “How did your hair accessory fall into that corner?”
Sheng Qixiao followed unhurriedly. He had no intention of explaining in the face of Shen Que’s probing, merely returning a curious question: “You just said you left something behind. Did you find it?”
Shen Que’s steps halted. Subconsciously, he wanted to gloss over taking photos of the murals: “I misremembered; it was nothing. Let’s hurry up and go.”
On the way back, the two rarely spoke. Sheng Qixiao was already a man of few words, and since Shen Que didn’t speak, he naturally had nothing to say.
Shen Que wasn’t intentionally being cold to Sheng Qixiao. After all, he still counted on getting some useful information from him. He hadn’t forgotten the purpose of this trip.
But once suspicion appears, it cannot be masked.
The more he tried to pretend nothing had happened, the more restless he felt inside, until finally, he couldn’t even manage half a smile.
