Tang Ye, upon hearing those words, reached out and grabbed Lu Xiaojie’s hand. The next second, Lu Xiaojie kicked open the door at the top of the stairs, and with her other hand, she reached out towards the wall on the opposite side of the corridor, where there was a blank painting!
Whoosh!
As Lu Xiaojie’s hand holding the crow feather touched that painting, Tang Ye’s vision went dark. When he opened his eyes again, he saw a sowhat yellowed ceiling, and beside him was Lu Xiaojie. However, her condition seed much worse than before. She was slumped against the wall on the ground, coughing incessantly. When Tang Ye’s gaze turned toward her, she suddenly spat out a mouthful of fresh blood.
"Are you alright?"
"I... I’m fine... well... I lied to you..."
"Can you not joke right now?"
"I’m not joking. It’s not about that. I’ve been lying to you from the start..."
"Huh?"
At this mont, Lu Xiaojie looked utterly listless, resembling a dying old person. What puzzled Tang Ye even more were the words coming out of Lu Xiaojie’s mouth.
"Actually... there is a way out... huff... you just need soone to grant you permission, agree to let you... agree to let you go out."
"What are you talking about? Soone to agree, do you think Dairya would let out?"
Tang Ye crouched down and began to check Lu Xiaojie’s physical condition. But he hadn’t even started to think this way when he imdiately realized a deadly problem—that since he had entered this place, the new color that his eyes could see was gone. Everything he saw was now the sa as what those below Level 8 could see!
And he had only just now realized this issue!
"What’s wrong with you?" Seeing Tang Ye zoning out, Lu Xiaojie couldn’t help but ask.
"It’s nothing... What you just said... Wait, you..."
Tang Ye continued with the previous topic, but before he could finish, he suddenly sensed that sothing was amiss. mories of what Lu Xiaojie had said before flashed through his mind. A twin body?
"You must have guessed... I’ve been lying to you from the very beginning. In reality, as long as I grant you permission, you could appear. But now, you can’t..."
As she spoke, Lu Xiaojie opened her mouth to cough again. Blood spurted out, but she did not pause for too long and continued, "I need you to do a favor, no... I should ask you..."
"What is it?" Tang Ye asked with furrowed brows.
"You must... take out of here. I... I’ve given up... Dairya is a pitiful child, she... she shouldn’t be like this. She’s kind... always has been kind... Not everything... is her fault, although..."
Lu Xiaojie’s voice was intermittent; she seed to be enduring sothing, and her condition was getting worse. But she took a deep breath, trying to make herself feel a bit better, and then continued, "Even though she did wrong, those wrongs shouldn’t be borne by her alone. She’s kind, even if she’s turned into a zombie... she’s still kind. I want to help her... but..."
A bitter smile appeared on her face, resembling a sense of helplessness from her unfulfilled desires.
"I’m asking you... please take out of here... okay?"
Her face showed a pleading expression, a scene that felt familiar, much like the day Su Sigui stood in front of him. Tang Ye fell silent; he had no questions, and he did not ask anything else. From the mont Lu Xiaojie spoke those words, he knew there was a way out, and that he, too, was key.
"So, you no longer care about Dairya?"
"I want to care for her, I really do want to help her, but... I’m helpless. I’ve been helpless from the start, but people with more ti always have patience, like playing a aningless ga. I’ve thought about leaving too, but I don’t have any reason to. In the world outside, I don’t know what I could do. I am afraid... I need a direction to strive for. You wouldn’t understand. Many people, at so point, ponder what living is for. To witness births, aging, sickness, death? To repeat everyday life, experience joys and sorrows? In the end, everyone dies... I’m afraid that I’ll be lost outside..."
"I hate you, for a simple reason. I could have continued my life, accustod to the environnt I lived in, but you let know about her outside. I... I want to see her, just once... This is the only thing I’ve been looking forward to about the outside world for all the ti I’ve lived here. You might not quite understand. I don’t know how long the lifespan of a zombie is, maybe it’s eternal, but have you ever considered, what are you living for?"
"Right now... I just want to... cough cough... ah cough cough cough..."
Towards the end, Lu Xiaojie began coughing violently again. Her voice changed, and it was clear that her condition was now extrely dire.
"Are you okay?" Tang Ye imdiately asked. Lu Xiaojie did not respond, or more like, she was unable to speak at all. She kept coughing, and bright crimson blood kept flowing from her mouth. After a while, the blood she spat out turned from red to black, which looked particularly severe.
"Of course there’s sothing wrong, but you can’t save . This is the price I must pay for coming here, and the price for wanting to leave this place. You must take out of here... you must..."
Her voice got softer, and by the end, it was barely audible. Tang Ye watched her in silence, unsure of what was happening to Lu Xiaojie. Was she transforming, about to gain sothing? Tang Ye dared not be certain, but he didn’t want to disturb her lightly.
She seed to have fallen asleep, and after a long ti without speaking, Tang Ye glanced around. They were not just anywhere; they were exactly at the place where Dairya’s family lived—this was Camberlite. However, it was different from the Camberlite Tang Ye knew. The furniture in the house was missing a lot. The kitchen was bare and empty. The bedroom door, where the Bick couple once slept, seed to have been violently torn off, leaving only half a door ajar. Inside, there was no bed, and the wall’s peeling paint had fallen off in large areas, leaving the walls pocked and uneven. Wood chips from destroyed wooden furniture littered the ground, and broken window glass mixed with dust coated the floor—it was desolate.
Suddenly, Tang Ye asked, "Is there any tobacco here?"
Lowering her head, Lu Xiaojie suddenly lifted it, and at that mont, her eyes had completely lost their whites, replaced by pure black, as if pure darkness.
With those emotionless, abyssal eyes, she looked towards Tang Ye, and after a mont, she replied, "None here. Maybe, you can go outside and look."
"Is it safe here?"
"Temporarily safe. She... will be here soon..."
"So, do we continue to run?"
"No need. This will be our battlefield..."
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