Chapter 2: Transmigration (2)

Wen Yingchao toyed with the dagger in his hand, its sharp blade spinning deftly around his fingertips.

He spat out the half-melted object. It was pink, resembling a piece of candy. A sickeningly sweet, metallic taste still lingered in his mouth.

Wen Yingchao knew what it was.

One of the three major forbidden drugs in this world, Sweet Nothings. Anyone who took it would temporarily lose the ability to control their own body and become completely obedient to the commands of those around them, remaining fully conscious as they were reduced to puppets in their user’s hands.

Gu Mowan had once suffered a terrible setback because of this drug. Now, he had turned around and used it on Wen Yingchao.

Even though Wen Yingchao had spat it out in time, he could clearly feel the thread connecting his consciousness to his body stretched taut, ready to snap at the slightest movement. The portion that had melted was seeping into his system, flowing through his bloodstream and attempting to consume him completely.

Wen Yingchao silently put the dagger away.

He had found it beside the ice coffin moments earlier and hidden it in his sleeve for self-defense. He hadn’t expected it to come in handy so soon.

He stared coldly at Gu Mowan, watching as a beautiful smile bloomed across the other man’s face after his initial astonishment.

“Excellent. To be able to conceal your true intentions so perfectly… It really is you. It could only be you.”

Gu Mowan chuckled softly, his fingers brushing Wen Yingchao’s cheek.

“But you’ve already lost control, haven’t you? Otherwise, why aren’t you avoiding me right now?”

Wen Yingchao wanted to curse. He moved his lips and struggled to retreat a little.

“You’re always like this. Pretending to be innocent, pretending to be pitiful, pretending to be weak, luring me in before revealing your fangs behind my back.”

Gu Mowan pressed down on Wen Yingchao’s shoulder and leaned toward his ear. His breath drifted softly against it, and the hurried breathing he’d displayed earlier was nowhere to be heard.

In a gentle voice, he said, “Come with me.”

Wen Yingchao closed his eyes briefly, struggling to maintain control of his body.

If Gu Mowan hadn’t insisted on forcing him to take the drug, he would have been perfectly willing to follow him outside and see what this so-called protagonist intended to do.

He said, “You didn’t need to resort to such methods. You claim you’ve grown, yet you’re even willing to use a forbidden drug now. From where I’m standing, you haven’t improved at all.”

Gu Mowan wasn’t angry. If anything, he openly admitted it.

“That’s right. Haven’t you always known? I’m just a coward who’s good for nothing.”

“But that’s all right.” Seeing that Wen Yingchao still hadn’t moved, Gu Mowan whistled. “If you refuse to come with me, I have other ways.”

Click.

No one knew where Gu Mowan had produced the handcuffs from, but before Wen Yingchao could react, he had been handcuffed to the other man.

Gu Mowan yanked hard, making Wen Yingchao stumble several steps. Already extremely weak, he was dragged right up beside Gu Mowan, who grabbed his arm and squeezed until it began to ache.

“Now you can’t run away.”

Gu Mowan reached out with his other hand, wound a strand of Wen Yingchao’s hair around his finger, then blew on it, scattering it again.

The handcuffs rattled.

“Ah, we’ve wasted too much time.” Gu Mowan suddenly raised his head and looked outside. “There are other important things to take care of. Let’s go. Stop dawdling.”

Gu Mowan released Wen Yingchao’s arm, which had already been squeezed red. The other man immediately started walking. Not wanting to be half-dragged and half-pulled along, Wen Yingchao decided he might as well cooperate and followed him.

“I haven’t laid a hand on you yet, so put that useless wariness of yours aside for now. At least for the moment, I’m not going to do anything to you,” Gu Mowan said.

Wen Yingchao glanced at him, then answered with a quiet, “Mm.”

Something was strange.

Gu Mowan seemed like a person split in two.

The madness he’d displayed earlier had vanished in the blink of an eye. The man standing before Wen Yingchao now seemed to have had his insides replaced, speaking to him in an extraordinarily calm voice that was completely different from before.

“Where are you taking me?” Wen Yingchao asked.

“You’ll find out soon enough,” Gu Mowan replied.

Wen Yingchao felt he needed to choose his words carefully and try to extract some information from the other man.

For example, what exactly was Gu Mowan after, and what did he intend to do with him?

He knew that the Gu Mowan in the original novel wasn’t a particularly rational person. After the initial outburst of malice, however, he had concealed his emotions remarkably well, instead treating Wen Yingchao with that strange, affected attitude of his.

It seemed he had ulterior motives.

Gu Mowan was walking ahead when he suddenly stopped. The exit to the secret chamber was right in front of them, and a broad swath of light spilled across their bodies. Wen Yingchao barely managed to stop himself, nearly crashing straight into Gu Mowan.

Gu Mowan suddenly sneered. “Wen Yingchao, are you seriously still not reacting to any of this? You’ve been dead for so long that I think your brain has stopped working properly.”

Wen Yingchao: ?

Could these cryptic-speaking idiots just get lost already?

Gu Mowan let out a mocking laugh.

He raised a hand and motioned for Wen Yingchao to follow. The two of them stepped out of the secret chamber one after the other.

The scene outside finally came into full view, and for some reason, Wen Yingchao froze for a moment.

The Nether Abyss.

The words surfaced naturally in his mind.

He had assumed the light outside was sunlight, but it was actually coming from a lamp hanging overhead. Within it burned an everlasting glazed flame that would never go out.

The surrounding area was desolate. Buildings lay in ruins, and the traces left behind had weathered away. The place had clearly been in a state of decay for a long time. On the central control screen, a chaotic stream of numbers continued to flicker, presumably corrupted data displaying error messages. The digits jumped erratically, flashing 0101.

Wen Yingchao finally understood what Gu Mowan had meant.

“This place is…” he murmured.

“You finally recognize it?”

Gu Mowan folded his arms, a smile dancing in his eyes. He looked utterly sincere.

“This is where I killed you.”

The cracked platform and the surrounding ruins were precisely the abandoned wasteland left behind after the Battle of the Nether Abyss all those years ago.

But Gu Mowan had personally burned this place down. The glazed flames that had consumed everything were unique to this world. There wasn’t a second flame like them anywhere else.

Wen Yingchao lowered his gaze to Gu Mowan’s wrist. It was now as clean as ever, without the slightest trace of the cut he’d inflicted earlier.

“This isn’t reality,” Wen Yingchao concluded.

With that, he could more or less guess why Gu Mowan had kept him alive.

“That’s right. You took a little longer to figure it out than I expected.”

Gu Mowan seemed about to touch his face, but when he saw Wen Yingchao’s evasive movement, he lowered his hand with a look of regret.

“I’ve never seen you like this before. Your consciousness is so fragile right after awakening that the slightest touch could shatter it. Although the ‘key’ is hidden inside you, I really can’t bear to hurt you.”

Wen Yingchao frowned. “The papers on the floor?”

“Ah,” Gu Mowan replied. “Those were indeed one of my objectives. But compared with the consciousness-resurrection experiment, discovering that you’re the one imprisoned inside the consciousness prison makes me much happier.”

“You understand, don’t you?”

Gu Mowan pinched Wen Yingchao’s chin.

“Although this place isn’t reality, dying inside the consciousness prison means truly dying. So I’d advise you not to make any rash moves.”

Wen Yingchao: “…”

But the original owner really was dead. The protagonist himself had burned his corpse to ashes.

Although, given the technology of this world, using his genes to create an empty shell of a body wouldn’t be particularly difficult, who would dare undertake such a thankless task with the protagonist’s halo hanging over their head?

Wen Yingchao said, “I’m the ‘key.’ You need me, Gu Mowan.”

Gu Mowan admitted it openly. Or rather, he had never intended to hide that fact in the first place.

“That’s right. I need you.”

In the original novel, the consciousness prison was merely mentioned in passing, with little elaboration.

Therefore, Wen Yingchao only knew that the consciousness prison had another name: the Realm of Memories.

It didn’t belong to reality, yet it was closely connected to it.

Conducting consciousness-resurrection experiments inside the consciousness prison provided a flawless cover.

Whoever had thought of this was a genius.

Tap. Tap.

Wen Yingchao’s gaze shifted slightly.

“Wait a moment.” He reached out and grabbed Gu Mowan just as the other man was about to continue walking. “It sounds like there are footsteps?”

There was no way Gu Mowan hadn’t noticed them.

“I heard them,” Gu Mowan replied. “The consciousness prison recreates its owner’s memories. That’s perfectly normal.”

Wen Yingchao shook his head. “No, that’s not it. I’ve realized something.”

The footsteps drew closer, unhurried and steady. The glazed flame overhead paid no heed to how many living beings had perished here. It simply continued to burn, endlessly burning.

Wen Yingchao had encountered this kind of description in the novel.

The Sweet Nothings was tugging at his consciousness, threatening to tear it apart. He dug his fingernails into his palm to keep himself awake. Even though he knew this wasn’t a physical place, he could still feel the pain.

The handcuffs had left a red mark around his wrist.

“Wen Yingchao, come with me. I know the way out of here. That’s how I found this place in the first place. If I wanted you dead, you wouldn’t still be alive right now.”

Gu Mowan pressed his lips together, biting the flesh inside his mouth.

But Wen Yingchao was determined to wait until the footsteps drew closer. He tried to pull Gu Mowan toward him, only to feel a sharp pain pierce his palm.

Wen Yingchao withdrew the dagger he’d kept hidden in his sleeve.

Gu Mowan’s expression darkened. As a consciousness construct, any blood that appeared vanished in an instant. The wound on his palm returned to its original, unblemished state in the blink of an eye, leaving only the lingering pain behind.

That injury had been real.

“Very well.” Gu Mowan exhaled a cold breath. “I was originally going to let you keep it, but now I’m confiscating it.”

He suddenly attacked.

Wen Yingchao couldn’t fight back. Gu Mowan seized him by the hair and restrained his wrist, his pulse beating beneath the other man’s palm. Wen Yingchao struggled with all his might, but the dagger merely slipped from his grasp, hitting the floor with a sharp clang that rang out through the chamber.

Wen Yingchao thought that was enough.

The memory constructs inside the consciousness prison weren’t merely simple recreations of past scenes. At that very moment, he clearly heard the footsteps outside come to a halt.

What followed was the wary voice of the person approaching.

“Who’s in there?!”

The voice was identical to Gu Mowan’s.

Since Wen Yingchao had awakened, this was the first time he had seen the man before him wear such an expression.

It wasn’t anger, nor was it the panic of someone whose secret had been discovered. Instead, it was an excessive calmness, utterly devoid of emotion, as though he were…

Looking at a dead person.

The glazed flame overhead flickered precariously, while the memory construct outside, having received no response, began walking faster.

No, it might reach them at any moment.

“If we don’t leave now, it’ll be too late. You don’t want to die at the hands of a memory construct either, do you?”

In the end, Gu Mowan was the first to break the stalemate.

As though nothing had happened, he bent down and picked up Wen Yingchao’s dagger. Apparently, he had swallowed his earlier declaration about confiscating it. Holding the blade by its tip, he offered the handle to Wen Yingchao.

“Just so we’re clear, if we run out of time, I’m not going to help you.”

The numbers on the central control screen flickered frantically.

Wen Yingchao wasn’t someone who failed to recognize when it was time to compromise.

“There’s no point in hiding it anymore,” he said bluntly. “The owner of the consciousness prison has a consciousness that constitutes the entire prison. It’s impossible for him to exist inside it as an independent individual.”

He continued, “This is Gu Mowan’s memory, Gu Mowan’s prison. So…”

“You’re not Gu Mowan. Who are you?”

Bang!

The glazed flame above Wen Yingchao’s head suddenly shattered!