Chapter 55

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Chapter 55: Purgatory Reunion (VII)

Qi Leren woke up. When he woke up, he felt very tired. He didn’t want to open his eyes. He just wanted to let the heavy sleepiness drag him and let him continue to sleep.

But he vaguely felt that something was wrong. He should have been sitting under the rock wall, but now the thing the back of his head was resting against was not as hard as stone, and why did he feel that he was lying down…

Qi Leren woke up with fright, suddenly opened his eyes, and immediately saw Ning Zhou sitting beside the rock wall.

He didn’t know when they had changed their positions. Ning Zhou’s leg had become his pillow, and the blanket was put over his own body, while Ning Zhou rested by sitting against the rock wall with his eyes closed. At the moment he woke up, Ning Zhou also opened his eyes that were without a trace of sleep.

“Why don’t you take a rest?” Qi Leren quickly sat up and asked anxiously.

Ning Zhou shook his head: “I’ve slept enough.”

When Qi Leren looked at the time, eight hours had passed.

Since they had both woken up, Qi Leren simply moved all the picnic items from Chen Baiqi out of the item bar, made a fire, and made some hot food for Ning Zhou. The method was quite simple and crude, directly throwing a small demon crystal into a vessel filled with water. The water was immediately heated to boiling by the energy in the demon crystal, and then the pot was put on it to start heating up, skillfully cooking noodles.

While cooking, Qi Leren talked about what had happened when they were separated. When he talked about Chen Baiqi giving him special training, he looked sad: “…When I was chased by the dog, I was particularly desperate. I didn’t know when those days would pass. I wanted to jump into the sea and never come up again.”

After saying that, Qi Leren felt that this was inappropriate and added: “Of course, the effects of the training were still very good, otherwise I would have died in my last task.”

Saying this, Qi Leren felt stupid again; shouldn’t they talk about some easy topics when meeting again after a long separation? Why did his IQ plummet so far when he saw Ning Zhou?

Sure enough, Ning Zhou showed a worried look.

“Hey, it’s nothing, am I not fine?” Qi Leren quickly changed the subject. “Where’s your big bird?”

Ning Zhou released the eagle from its pet bag. As soon as it came out, it began to shake its feathers. It was fed a [Pleasing Ration] by Qi Leren and swallowed in one gulp.

When the food was cooked, they ate hot noodles, and then they continued to talk.

They weren’t good at expressing their feelings, and even have a natural shyness towards love. The two men tacitly avoided the topic of love, as if they had forgotten why they were here after the night. Ning Zhou didn’t say that he was delighted when he learned that Qi Leren had come back from the dead, nor did Qi Leren speak of his love hidden in the bottom of his heart. Inexplicably, at this moment, the two people had an intuition.

They watched carefully, and even their hearts beat faster when their fingers accidentally touched. When Qi Leren spoke several times, he couldn’t express his words, but Ning Zhou didn’t notice it, and he nodded.

“Aren’t you curious how I knew you were here?” Qi Leren asked. Ning Zhou hadn’t even known about Qi Leren’s resurrection, because letters could only be sent to the transfer station in the Underground Ant City, but Ning Zhou had gone to Purgatory after writing his letter and didn't receive the letter.

Ning Zhou nodded his head. He really was curious. How had Qi Leren recognized that it was him when he’d seen the huge magic dragon in the lake of fire?

“Actually, this is a bit hard to explain… When I was in reality… Well, when I lived in the world I’m from, I downloaded a game called ‘Nightmare Game’ with my laptop.” Qi Leren considered the statement and prepared to start from the beginning, but he choked when he started. “This… what a laptop is may be a bit complicated to explain…”

It suddenly occurred to Qi Leren that Ning Zhou, as a person born in the Nightmare World, may not know what it was at all.

“I know.” Ning Zhou said, with a smile in his eyes. “I’ve done the copy task of your time.”

“Really? What was it like?” Qi Leren asked curiously, his spirits rising.

“At that time, I needed to make a phone call with my mobile phone. I had to look at the mobile phone for a long time,” Ning Zhou said.

Qi Leren laughed with a “pft” sound, and Ning Zhou also laughed: “At that time, I really couldn’t do anything. When I saw the gas stove, I thought for a long time about where the demon crystal was installed. As for the computer, I couldn’t figure it out. I guessed that it was a product of alchemy.”

Qi Leren was overjoyed and laughed for a long time before asking, “Did you learn it later?”

Ning Zhou nodded his head.

“Have you ever played computer games?” Qi Leren asked again.

“Well, I like minesweeper,” Ning Zhou said, looking serious and sincere.

With this said, could Ning Zhou, who liked minesweeper and probably had only played these sorts of games with his own computer, understand the Nightmare Game he spoke of? Qi Leren was deeply worried. However worries are worries, so Qi Leren tried to describe things in understandable sentences: After playing the game, he had entered the Novice Village, then found the laptop again and got the Easter Egg in the castle. Finally, he talked about the previous task, and how he had learned the news of Ning Zhou’s accident in advance through the game in the laptop—of course, he didn’t say that he had lost his hand and almost died. He didn’t want to worry Ning Zhou.

Qi Leren comforted: “In my eyes, no matter what power you use, I believe you’ll only use it to protect the world.”

Ning Zhou looked at him deeply, and his complicated mood was indescribable.

What was at the end of power? While chasing the elusive mystery, people with power were destined to move closer to power, and the closer they got, the more they lost themselves. This feeling wasn’t very strong before achieving a half-field, but after reaching the level of a half-field, every step after that was closer to one’s origin.

But in the end he didn’t say anything, just nodded his head gently.

Once a person had expectations, even if they were only a little bit weak, they were no longer willing to rush to close their eyes.

He would look at his light until the day when he had to be destroyed.

&&&

On the way back to the Underground Ant City, Qi Leren thought that the dense sentry posts would bring them trouble, but he didn’t expect the demon guards to disappear without a trace, which made him feel confused.

“When I came here before, there were many guards. Have they withdrawn?” Qi Leren wondered.

Ning Zhou looked back at the sentry post they had already passed, thoughtful.

“When no one could enter or exit because of martial law, did that have to do with you?” Qi Leren asked.

“Maybe it was because of the Devil of Slaughter,” Ning Zhou quietly changed the subject. “I heard that he started to have frequent appearances in the lake of fire a month ago and broke out once. According to the task background, the Devil of Slaughter’s consciousness has broken the seal.”

“Well…” Qi Leren suddenly had a thought, but didn’t say it, and went on according to Ning Zhou’s words: “Speaking of this, the second part of the task requires us to ‘destroy the Devil of Slaughter and gain one third of the authority of the Devil of Destruction’, but now we have no clue.”

Ning Zhou hummed, his expression stiff.

Ning Zhou really was a bad liar. Qi Leren could see that he was worried. When the demon information broker he had spoken to before had said “the Devil of Destruction’s former people appeared near the lake of fire”, he inevitably had made some connections.

This group of demons was probably looking for Ning Zhou, who had inherited the force of destruction.

He wouldn’t mention it yet. Qi Leren didn’t want to put more pressure on Ning Zhou. He just wanted to make Ning Zhou have a better life.

“Well… Let’s go back to the Underground Ant City first. I left in a hurry. I didn’t ask the Illusionist when he was going to go back to the Village of Dusk. Let’s go back with him. What do you think?” Qi Leren asked.

“Alright,” Ning Zhou said.

“Good, good, let’s walk.” The eagle flew up from behind and stopped on Qi Leren’s shoulder to peck his ears.

Qi Leren helplessly touched it, and was pecked in the nose as it asked for food. Ning Zhou glanced at it coldly, and the eagle muttered “how stingy” and fluttered away with its wings.

“Don’t let it get used to it,” Ning Zhou said.

Qi Leren bowed his head and smiled. On a sudden whim, his right hand quietly grasped Ning Zhou’s left hand. Ning Zhou froze for a moment, then trembled a little as he took his hand.

One person looked at the fluorescent plants on the left side of the rock wall, and one looked at the fluorescent night moth on the right side of the rock wall, and the two moved forward without a word. Only their heartbeats with disordered rhythms and the sweetness flowing from the bottom of their hearts secretly announced their tacit understanding.

Qi Leren’s thoughts were as messy as fallen leaves swept by the wind. For a moment, he wondered whether he should take the initiative. For a moment, he felt that with the environment Ning Zhou had grown up in, he wouldn’t be able to adapt to the modern ways of love. Finally, he desperately reviewed himself, and how he hadn’t talked more about love and gathered experience in his student days, so he was now like a high school student experiencing his first love… The object of his affections was still a junior high school student who was more ignorant than him.

If you want to be “unsuitable for children”, you have to get married first. Do you have to get married before kissing? When you get back to the Village of Dusk, you can buy an engagement ring… Ah, you’re penniless. It seems that you have to do a task first to earn some survival days. You can’t bring Ning Zhou’s blue gem ring from your grave to make up for it.

Before seeing Ning Zhou, he had thought about Ning Zhou all day. After seeing Ning Zhou, his head did not rest, but he thought more and more…

Along the way, the two people held hands like no one was watching, left Purgatory on the way back to the Underground Ant City, and got on the “train”. This kind of car that was pulled by a strong domesticated demon at the front on a track was called a rail car in the Underground Ant City. Qi Leren and Ning Zhou put on their cloaks, sat side by side, and returned to the Underground Ant City.

However, an accident happened.

“What, the Illusionist is missing?” Qi Leren asked in shock.

The contact person from the Village of Dusk in the Underground Ant City was a young woman named Celia, who was dressed in the style of the Underground Ant City. She nodded solemnly: “Yes, the day after you left, the Illusionist took the Soothsayer’s edict to meet the Dragon Ant Queen and never came back.”

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Editor’s Notes: I’ve hesitantly decided to stop including a misgendering cw when it only applies to the Illusionist’s pronouns because I worry that it will get redundant, and I think it might be more apt to use it only in cases when heavier misgendering occurs (as well as I’ve often felt a bit odd doing so since this humble editor is a femme person who uses he/him pronouns). If you would like me to continue using the warning, please let me know and I will do so.

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