It seemed like another dream.
Yet, unlike all the dreams I’d had in this life, this dream had temperature.
Ice-cold, but not uncomfortable—like the temperature of Xie Zhuo’s palm, cool in just the right way.
As far as my eyes could see was chaos, but different from the chaos when controlled by the evil miasma.
In this chaos, the shape-shifting person didn’t appear again. There was only a voice, faintly lingering by my ear.
He said, “Someone once told me to cherish my own life, to love this mortal world. I never understood how to feel warmth, or why to love…”
“Not long ago, I finally understood…”
The ice-cold energy flowed through my body, as if caressing all my blood vessels and skin.
“This is joy and love.”
His words fell on the tip of my heart, burning me against this coldness.
My heart contracted, and almost instinctively, I reached out, wanting to grasp the person speaking.
But when I used all my strength to break free from the force binding my entire body like bandages, at that moment my fingertips finally extended…
The chaos receded, and a blinding light shone into my eyes.
My hand was stretched out in midair.
“Xie Zhuo…”
Before me was emptiness, with only a gentle breeze passing by, brushing my fingertips and bringing a golden leaf that softly passed through the gaps between my fingers.
A… leaf?
I sat up, looking around, feeling disoriented.
Where was this?
I was still in a forest, but it was different from the scene I saw before losing consciousness. The white snow forest seemed to have been colored by flames. As far as I could see were orange-red withered leaves, carrying the essence of autumn, rustling down and dancing throughout the forest.
The “rustle, rustle” sound made the surroundings feel even more desolate.
“Xie… Xie Zhuo?”
I called Xie Zhuo’s name, trying to stand up from the ground.
I thought it would be difficult, but… strangely, that corrupted, broken feeling from before had miraculously disappeared from my body.
I felt my body was lighter than at any previous time when I’d been healthy.
Looking down, I saw a formation beneath my feet that no longer glowed. Below, the formation was not the ice lake anymore, but solid ground.
This was too strange…
How did I recover? How did I get here? Where was this, and what time was it now? Were we still five hundred years in the past, or five hundred years later? Or had we gone to some other strange time?
“Xie Zhuo?!”
I shouted Xie Zhuo’s name loudly in the forest, but apart from the rustling leaves, there was no response.
Where had he gone?
Suddenly, a sharp pain shot through my mind, and a blurry, chaotic image flashed before my eyes.
In the image, Xie Zhuo knelt beside me, his body surrounded by surging black energy, his pupils completely black. He waved his hand, drawing a pure white blade from the formation beneath me, and then, without any hesitation!
He thrust the blade into his own heart!
I abruptly came back to myself.
The image in my mind vanished, but I stood frozen in place.
What I just saw…
What was it?
A hallucination? Or something that had truly happened…
I looked down at the ground again. In the image I just saw, this ground was still the ice lake, but the formation on the ice lake was identical to the formation on this ground…
I reached out to touch the formation on the ground.
Easily, I wiped away a section of the formation. So easily, as if it wasn’t a formation at all, but just a child’s mischief, drawing strange patterns on the ground with a tree branch.
But the unease in my heart grew heavier.
“Xie Zhuo!” I turned to look around, calling his name, then started walking, searching for him everywhere in the deep autumn forest.
But he was nowhere to be found.
I searched throughout the forest, running at first, then using my spiritual power. I rode the wind, weaving through the red leaves that burned like fire. My throat became hoarse from calling, but I found nothing.
Finally, I reached the edge of the forest.
At the edge, I finally confirmed that this forest was indeed the ice and snow forest where Xie Zhuo had brought me.
Because in the distance, the towering inner wall of the Immortal City proclaimed that this was a confined land.
But this land was very different from when I arrived.