Chapter 11: - Longing

The fangs sank into the guard’s neck like two straws plunged into a cup of milk tea.

After that first scream, nothing remained in the guard’s throat but muffled whimpers. His blood was surging frantically toward his neck, only to be siphoned straight into A’Ming’s mouth.

In a situation like this, even if you wanted to scream, you could not. What followed was a suffocating oppression, the dull certainty of death pressing down all the way to the bottom.

The guard seemed able to hear his own blood flowing like a little stream beside his ears. His strength, his energy, even his soul itself seemed to be peeling away from his body piece by piece.

Of course he resisted. He had no intention of accepting death. His eyes could not see, and he had no idea what kind of monster he had encountered, but the sword in his hand continued proclaiming the same thing over and over:

He would not give up.

He would not face death quietly.

Pshk!

Pshk!

Pshk!

The sword kept churning and stabbing through A’Ming’s body.

A’Ming trembled with every movement.

Yet the satisfied smile on his face only grew stronger.

For A’Ming, this sensation, this warmth, this taste... he had missed it for far, far too long.

At this moment, the dust of half a year seemed to be ripped apart completely.

He had found himself again.

He had once more become what he should have been all along.

Blood.

Sacrifice.

This belonged to him.

His feast.

When the inner door opened and the guard thrust his sword into A’Ming, Zheng Fan had almost instinctively grabbed the nearest chair as a weapon.

Liang Cheng had already been kicked away, his condition unknown.

At this point, Zheng Fan had genuinely never thought of running.

This world was completely unfamiliar to him.

Other than this inn, other than the seven people around him, or rather the six people currently here, where else could he even go?

But A’Ming’s transformation, and the way the situation developed afterward, left Zheng Fan somewhat at a loss.

Hadn’t everyone said they had all become ordinary people?

He could not understand what was happening.

Still, at least events were turning in their favor.

Feng Siniang appeared in the doorway as well.

Unlike Zheng Fan, she showed no surprise at all.

Her eyes were filled only with excitement.

He had recovered.

No.

Even if he had recovered only a little, he had truly begun recovering!

She did not know what had caused it.

But if he could recover... then what about her?

For former fiends like them, half a year of living as ordinary people had been nothing short of torture.

That was why, even after all of them had become ordinary people, the moment Zheng Fan chose the second road, every one of them had shown excitement.

They refused to accept stillness.

They refused to accept being ordinary.

They refused to live the normal cycle of birth, aging, sickness, and death.

Even after losing their strength, even after losing their former abilities, their hearts had never become willing to settle for mediocrity.

And now, she had seen it.

Power.

“Uh...”

The guard’s skin began to wrinkle.

His body deflated rapidly like a balloon with its air let out.

At last, thud! the guard’s body went limp.

A’Ming remained hanging there with both feet off the floor, still pinned to the wooden door by the man’s longsword.

Blood remained at the corner of A’Ming’s mouth.

He extended his tongue and slowly licked it clean, looking reluctant to waste even the slightest trace of essence.

Then he lowered his head and examined his abdomen, which had been stabbed into a complete mess, along with the longsword still pinning him in place.

A’Ming reached for the hilt.

He could not quite reach it.

Zheng Fan immediately understood.

He dropped the chair, hurried over, and instinctively reached for the sword hilt.

Then he hesitated.

If a normal person was impaled by a sharp weapon, you were not supposed to pull it out casually. Doing so could cause much worse damage.

But did that rule apply to A’Ming?

“Master, how much longer do you plan to admire the view?”

“Uh...”

Zheng Fan wrapped both hands around the hilt and asked one more time, just to be sure.

“Pull it out?”

“Pull.”

Zheng Fan braced himself and pulled.

The first attempt did nothing.

He took two deep breaths and pulled again, this time without holding anything back.

Pop!

The longsword came free.

The momentum sent Zheng Fan stumbling backward several steps before he barely managed to steady himself.

But looking at the situation in front of him, he genuinely had no idea what to do next.

Fortunately, he did not need to.

Feng Siniang came out of the inner room, walked straight over, and without the slightest courtesy kicked A’Ming in the head.

“Want me to find you a coffin?”

“Yes.”

Then Fourth Lady pointed at the bloody mess on the floor.

“Want us to stuff all those innards back in too, then sew your belly shut with needle and thread?”

“No need. I’ve already drunk my fill of blood. As long as my head isn’t broken, I’m fine.”

“Tsk, tsk, tsk.” Feng Siniang looked almost painfully envious. “You vampires really are convenient.”

“Hehehe...”

A’Ming actually laughed.

Unfortunately, everything below his neck was simply too mangled at the moment. He could still speak, but his voice was inevitably weak and faint.

“If you want convenience too, I can bite you once.”

Make you his First Embrace.

Turn you into a vampire as well.

“Sure. Wait until this old lady is actually getting old. Then I can save money on cosmetics.”

She paused.

Feng Siniang bent down and stared directly into A’Ming’s face.

“When did this happen?”

For the past half year, everyone had been diligently and honestly reforming themselves into ordinary people.

Who could have imagined that all of a sudden, a traitor would appear among them?

“Yesterday.”

“Why?”

A’Ming turned his head with some difficulty and looked toward Zheng Fan, who was still standing there holding the sword.

“Master... woke up.”

For a moment, the scorching intensity in Fourth Lady’s gaze became almost too much for Zheng Fan to bear.

Fortunately, although A’Ming looked terrible, he did not seem to be in any real danger.

Zheng Fan immediately dropped the sword and ran over to Liang Cheng, who had been stabbed and kicked away earlier, then helped him sit up.

This was the first time Zheng Fan had ever touched Liang Cheng’s body.

He was heavy.

The most obvious thing, however, was how cold his skin felt.

A large tear had opened in the front of Liang Cheng’s clothes.

There was also a wound across his chest, though it did not look very deep and was not bleeding much.

The blood itself was black.

It looked almost like crude oil.

“You all right?” Zheng Fan asked with concern.

Liang Cheng shook his head.

“I’m fine.”

If an ordinary person had taken that sword strike, there was a good chance he would have been nearly cut in half.

But Liang Cheng was, after all, a professional performer who broke boulders on his chest at the inn.

Calling him thick-skinned and tough-fleshed was not an exaggeration in the slightest.

“Clean this up first. We need to send those two away,” Feng Siniang said.

The guard was already dead.

The young master had been captured alive.

The next thing to do was not rush into interrogating him for the “worldview.”

First, they had to clean up the aftermath.

“Master, I’m afraid I’ll have to trouble you to come with me.” Then Fourth Lady looked toward Liang Cheng, who was holding his wound, and pointed at A’Ming, who had collapsed into a puddle on the floor. “Help clean him up.”

Liang Cheng was weak, but still nodded.

He pulled down a strip of decorative silk from the room, wrapped it crudely around the wound on his chest, then began dealing with A’Ming’s mess on the floor.

Zheng Fan followed Fourth Lady into the inner room.

The young master lay unconscious beside the bed, stockings still wrapped around his neck, completely motionless.

“Master likes stockings too?” Fourth Lady asked as she pulled Zheng Fan down in front of the dressing table.

“Most men don’t exactly dislike them, do they?”

“If Master likes them, next time this servant will wear them for Master alone.”

As she spoke, Fourth Lady took several items out of the dressing-table drawers.

Then she scooped something from a small jar, rubbed it repeatedly between her palms, and began smearing it across Zheng Fan’s face.

The smell was sharp.

His skin also burned slightly.

Zheng Fan still had no idea what she was doing.

He did not dare speak.

He did not dare ask.

He simply sat there.

“Master, you can close your eyes first.”

“All right.”

Zheng Fan closed his eyes.

He could feel Fourth Lady’s hands moving rapidly over his face, working with astonishing speed.

Was this makeup?

Or... a disguise?

Roughly ten minutes later, Fourth Lady massaged both of Zheng Fan’s shoulders a few times.

“Master, you can open your eyes now.”

Zheng Fan opened them.

The face in the bronze mirror had changed dramatically.

He now resembled the dead guard by seven or eight parts.

“Master, we need to strip that man’s clothes and put them on you first. I still need to tidy myself up.”

Wearing a dead man’s clothes might be taboo.

But after you had already killed the man, there was hardly much point worrying about taboos anymore.

Zheng Fan obediently nodded.

He pushed open the door.

Liang Cheng had already wiped the floor clean.

A wooden bucket sat nearby.

Inside it were the things that had spilled from A’Ming’s abdomen earlier.

If they were washed thoroughly enough, there might even be enough for a hotpot meal.

A’Ming himself had been placed inside another large bathing barrel.

Only his head remained above the rim.

Liang Cheng pointed toward one corner.

The dead guard’s clothing had been stacked there.

“There’s some blood on it. Master can use a few strips of silk to bind over those places and hide it.”

“Oh. All right.”

There was no reason to be shy by now.

Zheng Fan began changing clothes right there.

Just as he finished, Fourth Lady came out of the inner room.

Even though Zheng Fan had mentally prepared himself, the sight still startled him.

The person walking out was not Fourth Lady at all.

It was unmistakably the young master.

Her disguise technique had truly reached an absurd level.

When she used it on someone else, like Zheng Fan, there were still flaws.

But when she used it on herself, she handled every detail effortlessly.

Fourth Lady carried some white powder and a strip of silk.

She walked over, fixed Zheng Fan’s hair, and used the silk to cover the bloodstains on his clothing.

Unable to help himself, Zheng Fan sighed.

“That’s incredibly convincing.”

Fourth Lady smiled, clearly proud of herself.

“Master, in the old days, this servant’s disguise arts could have been called the second greatest evil art of the East.”

“What was first?”

“Photoshop.”

“...” Zheng Fan.

“All done.”

Fourth Lady picked up the longsword, slid it back into its scabbard, and handed it to Zheng Fan.

“Master, let’s go downstairs.”

This had been part of the original plan.

Since the two men had entered the inn openly, they needed to leave openly as well.

Only then could suspicion be washed away from the establishment.

Zheng Fan copied the dead guard’s posture, cradling the longsword in his arms, and followed Fourth Lady downstairs.

At this hour, the inn was naturally no longer at peak business.

Still, four or five tables of customers remained, drinking.

The moment the pair appeared downstairs, one table of guests immediately began slapping the tabletop and laughing.

Fourth Lady instantly put on a humiliated, angry expression.

She swept her gaze around and scolded:

“Vulgar! Completely unreasonable!”

The insult sounded rather forced.

Her face, however, flushed exactly like that of someone whose embarrassing secret had just been exposed.

Every detail had been handled to perfection.

Zheng Fan continued cradling the sword expressionlessly and followed behind her.

He had none of Fourth Lady’s acting skill and did not dare improvise at a time like this.

The “young master’s” embarrassment only made the customers laugh harder.

Several obscene remarks were thrown after them without restraint.

The young master quickened his pace and hurried out of the inn, as though he could not bear to remain in this place one instant longer.

Just outside, they happened to run into Blind Man Bei returning from elsewhere.

He carried a parcel of pastries in one hand and several bolts of fine silk in the other.

Clearly, he had “served” the Patrol Lieutenant Commander’s wife extremely well.

Not only had she kept him until late at night, she had even sent him away with gifts.

The two sides crossed paths at the entrance and exchanged the smallest possible nod.

Those going in continued inward.

Those going out continued outward.

Zheng Fan followed Fourth Lady through the streets.

Truthfully, this was the farthest he had ever walked since awakening.

Before tonight, the farthest distance he had traveled was only to Blind Man Bei’s fortune-telling stall outside the inn.

After walking for about fifteen minutes, Fourth Lady slipped into an alley.

Naturally, Zheng Fan followed.

The lane looked a little like one of old Beijing’s hutongs.

One household door pressed closely against the next.

Fourth Lady produced a key, opened one of the doors, and motioned for Zheng Fan to enter.

“Master, this is another foothold we keep inside the city. Change clothes here first, then we’ll go back. Leave these clothes behind. I’ll deal with them.”

“Oh. All right.”

...

“So you almost had an accident?”

Blind Man Bei sat beside the bathing barrel, peeling an orange as he spoke.

“You could say that. We underestimated this world a little,” A’Ming replied calmly from inside the barrel.

“Mm. Then that was my mistake.” Blind Man Bei admitted the flaw in his arrangement without hesitation.

“It was your mistake, but it doesn’t matter. I think only a world like this can actually make us excited.”

Blind Man Bei put one segment of orange into his own mouth.

Then he held another piece in front of A’Ming’s lips.

“If I eat that, it’ll leak out,” A’Ming said.

“I want to watch.”

A’Ming did not open his mouth.

Liang Cheng was still wiping the floor and finishing the cleanup.

Blind Man Bei seemed lost in thought.

“We’re still short on manpower. Mm. Right, later we need to bring over some stove ash and spread it around here. There’s still a smell of blood.”

Liang Cheng nodded to show he understood.

Blind Man Bei continued, “At least there was danger but no disaster. Now we only need to wait for Xue San to finish stealing the documents and come back. Still, I think the truly useful thing will be the big fish you just caught. After tonight’s work, our first real window onto this world should finally be open. You two keep working. I’ll go interrogate that young master.”

“Better to wait until Master returns and let Master conduct the interrogation personally,” A’Ming said.

“But I think Master won’t do it. He’ll probably push the job onto me in the end.”

“The proper procedure should still be followed,” A’Ming reminded him.

“Hiss...”

Blind Man Bei drew in a surprised breath and turned toward A’Ming in the barrel.

A smile gradually appeared at the corner of his mouth.

“So that’s why you recovered part of your strength first?”

“What?”

“We agreed to play aloof together, and you secretly licked your way to the front.”

[End of Chapter 11]