Because the atmosphere inside the cabin was too eerie, Zhang Miao scrambled out through a gap in fear and perched on top, staying there.
Time ticked by, minute after minute.
Zhang Miao, gazing at the blue waves, prayed.
He prayed that those coming from the shore would be slow, and also prayed that the burnt guy inside the plane would keep on living…
He prayed that if the guy woke up, he wouldn’t go crazy and kill him.
“Sigh, what did I do to deserve this?” muttered Zhang Miao, sitting on the plane’s roof.
Even now, there was no way to back out.
……
Morrie stood up and stretched his waist and neck. All he’d talked about for the past hour or two were things within his own church, leaving his mouth dry and parched.
“What does he look like?” Boboli poured a cup of tea, sat down, and asked curiously, looking up.
“Well… he’s quite handsome. The time Xiao Cheng came to see me at the temple, he looked exactly the same as the first time. Hair neither too long nor too short, well-defined facial features, bright eyes, and nice skin. He’s a very spirited young man.”
……
In the blink of an eye, two hours had passed. Just as the hungry Zhang Miao was at a loss, the floating plane gradually began to sink toward the water’s surface.
“Ah! It’s sinking?” Zhang Miao panicked, “What do we do now!”
“Don’t be afraid!”
Zhang Miao turned his head. Against the rippling backdrop of the water, a bald man wrapped in an old bedsheet stood behind him.
The man’s face and body were like cracked, mottled wall paint—beneath the blackened skin showed reddish new flesh.
“You… have such a strong regenerative ability!”
Zhang Miao looked at Hong Haocheng’s right arm. It wasn’t the hazy energy arm from before, but a fair and rosy real arm.
Too terrifying—who would ever be his match in the future!
At this moment, Zhang Miao suddenly felt he had hit the jackpot and made the right bet!
“Not bad.” Hong Haocheng grinned, “Take off your pants.”
“Huh?” Zhang Miao stepped back in shock.
“Didn’t you say you want to pledge allegiance to me? Now offer your admission gift! Give me your trousers.”
Zhang Miao looked at the bare legs under the old blanket the man in front of him was wrapped in.
“I, uh… okay.”
In the afternoon sunlight, Zhang Miao, wearing only boxers, had his worn-out jeans snatched off by a mottled-skinned arm, which pulled them on in one swift motion before tossing the old bedsheet back to him.
“Wrap yourself in this. Don’t make a spectacle of yourself,” said the man with blackened skin, revealing a wide, white grin.
……
“Besides letting you save Brother Zizang, did Hong Haocheng do anything else?”
“Hmm…”
“Alright, not talking, huh? Fine, keep your secrets.”
Boboli clicked his tongue, stood up, grabbed a tissue to wipe his hands, and was about to leave the living room for his own room when something suddenly occurred to him.
The curly-haired boy turned his head and said:
“By the way, what is that guy’s ability? You’re supposed to know, right?”
“Well…” Morrie scratched his head. “Actually, I don’t really know.”
“What the hell have you been doing for thousands of years that you don’t even know?!”
“Spreading Yang Zicang’s legend to people in every era.”
……
Hong Haocheng fired off a series of questions about this world, but Zhang Miao brushed them off with a single sentence.
“People on the shore are coming to catch you, we need to get out of here fast.”
Wearing only jeans, his solid muscles on full display—Hong Haocheng rubbed his shaved head and looked toward the other side of the blue waters.
“What’s on the other side of the sea?”
“First of all, this isn’t the sea. Second, what’s on the other side are giants.”
“Giants?! Where exactly is this place!”
Zhang Miao shook his head. “Unfortunately, everyone says we’re trapped in some strange city.”
“Cities?”
After giving an explanation of this world, Zhang Miao stood up, wrapped in a blanket, hands on hips, and looked out over the blue waters.
“Over there is an island formed by the debris of another city that fell into here. Once your ‘city ranking’ reaches a certain level, you get a piece of that city as a reward.”
They both looked over in that direction.
“The city debris that made that island is known as ‘City No. 11.’”
Hong Haocheng let out a sigh.
At that moment, the plane jolted upon losing stability, beginning to descend nose-first towards the water.
Hong Haocheng gazed down at the colossal being beneath him. Scales had begun forming on the outer surface of the Demonic Nightmare airship, taking shape as outlines, but ultimately never fully emerged.
In fact, these scales had stopped growing half an hour ago, and the accompanying eerie aura had largely dissipated, replaced by a faint stench.
“I can’t hear it anymore…” Hong Haocheng murmured softly.
It wasn’t until this final tremor that the ring on his chest slowly solidified.
The dark red circle, forged like a ring from molten fire flickering between light and shadow, began to cool, its hue becoming uniform. Light slithered across its surface, briefly tracing a fleeting triangle.
Hong Haocheng said, “It shouldn’t sink too quickly. I’m going inside to grab some things.”
“I’ll go with you.”
The two of them jumped through the crack at the top of the aircraft and entered inside.
The transformed Demonic Nightmare plane resembled an actual aircraft quite closely, except the cabin had been reduced to just one compartment; beyond it lay an illusory door leading to the cockpit, now nothing but a false impression.
Looking through the frosted glass of the door, Zhang Miao saw the cockpit filled with a murky mixture of blood and lake water, a blurry chaos.
“Why can’t we hear the Demonic Nightmare’s heartbeat or its voice anymore?”
Zhang Miao, sensing something off about the invasive aura, asked about the companion Demonic Nightmare.
“It’s dead. It didn’t successfully gestate.”
“Huh?” Zhang Miao turned to look at Hong Haocheng’s emotionless expression.
“The fact that it could even fly in the end was its last burst of strength to save me, like a chick that hasn’t fully broken out of its shell rushing out. It’s lucky that it managed to crash this far from the shore.”
“Hong, Brother Hong, I’m sorry. At the time, it was the previous team leader who acted arbitrarily.”
“It’s okay. This was fate’s design.”
Hong Haocheng stepped forward, signaling Zhang Miao to move aside. He closed his eyes and placed a hand on this door.
{……}
[I can see your trajectory.]
Hong Haocheng wanted to hear the sound of the Demonic Nightmare aircraft one more time—even if it was a monster, it was a monster that had wanted to protect him.
{……}
[Forty-three point three kilometers. That is the entire length of your life.]
Hong Haocheng let out a long breath. “Let it begin with you.”
Zhang Miao, standing behind Hong Haocheng, thought of the other person’s model. Unfortunately, it was just a triangle. If the associated Demonic Nightmare hadn’t been attacked, the man before him would probably have a quadrilateral model.
“What rotten luck,” Zhang Miao muttered internally on Hong Haocheng’s behalf. Losing the associated Demonic Nightmare with the Red Model was a very unfortunate thing.
He looked at the boy’s back with a complex expression on his face.
This guy’s ability to consume souls should be gone by now… From now on, he’ll have to rely on his body to fight.
Just as Zhang Miao was lost in wild speculation, he suddenly felt a distant and mysterious aura slowly filling this place…
As if a weary traveler had arrived, bringing a new atmosphere from afar.
“Huh?”
Zhang Miao looked around in confusion, then turned his gaze to the reflection of the young man in the glass.
A strange voice echoed in Hong Haocheng’s heart.
[All my “bloodlines” are destined to reconcile in the passage of “time.”]
[Time will bestow upon you a new power.]
In the reflection on the glass, a mottled-skinned man slowly, hesitantly opened his twitching, trembling eyes-eyes that kept closing and then parting.
A faint brownish-yellow ring appeared around the boy’s pupils.
Zhang Miao stared perplexedly at the faint glow flickering in those pupils.
“What is that?”
With a low, rumbling hum, Zhang Miao involuntarily stepped back. He saw another shadowy projection of the plane slowly emerging, displaced from its surroundings.
[The first cycle of the Soul Traveler: the Mark of Life.]
Hong Haocheng passed his hand through the glass like a magician, extracting from it a small shard of metal wrapped in flesh and blood. Holding this object, he began to draw with it against the wall in front of him.
He drew very slowly.
It seemed that every millimeter drained immense concentration and energy from him.
Zhang Miao stared blankly at this scene, an inexplicable sense of oppression settling over his heart. Then he saw energy trails appearing beneath the “metal pen.”
“[I have a trajectory of 243,000 kilometers at a scale of 1:1,000,000.]” (Note 1.)
“This is… the trail of soaring across the skies with that wicked woman.”
“[I also have a trajectory of 12,723,210,000 kilometers at a 1:1 scale.]”
“These are the trails I traveled with my bad wife across land and sea… and the paths she walked alone…”
[I will trace the life track of the target using a scale of 10000:1.]
“Is this the reason you chose me? Because I, who have devoured the ‘Marked Traces of Mind bloodline,’ can record the lifelong paths of others?”
Hong Haocheng’s brush continued forward. Every single centimeter, the numbers plummeted by tens of thousands!
After just two or three centimeters, he felt dizzy and lightheaded.
“I trace the roads they walked—and continue onward in their stead…”
The dark red ring on his chest began to glow.
Even though it was difficult, his brush did not stop.
[I unlock the digit. The units digit.]
Snap! Something seemed to split and break out in his mind.
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