Chapter 144 Someone Will Come to Take It Back From You

"Wen Jingge, are you asking for a beating?"

"A beating?" Wen Jingge wiggled her lithe waist, pointed smugly at the person in the coffin, and said, "You want to hit me! Come on, come on, let's hurt each other!"

Lu Wei: ...

He really shouldn't have held any illusions about Wen Jingge. She had been acting like a normal person for long enough lately that he had completely forgotten how exasperating the abnormal Wen Jingge could be.

Tonight seemed to be her first time going mad since Wen Xueshan and the others left.

"I can't beat you." Lu Wei surrendered quickly.

There was no reasoning with a fool.

The wisest course of action was to make the fool believe she was actually very clever so she would stop pestering him.

"Then do you want to be able to beat me?"

"..." He wanted to, of course, but wouldn't saying it out loud ruin the magic?

"You want to, don't you?"

"Master, please stop making things hard for the Grand Master." Squatting before the crystal coffin, Liang Si finally couldn't help but push the lid open.

The person inside the coffin didn't actually look much like his esteemed Grand Master.

Perhaps due to ten thousand years of transformation and the countless changes that had swept through the Dianshan Mountain range, under the influence of time and environment, his Grand Master's features had grown much softer. Although the person in the coffin had been hacked to pieces, simply staring at that face filled one's heart with a bone-chilling, shadowy dread.

It felt as though one were standing right in the ancient battlefields of yesteryear, hearing a commander's order that would lay waste to entire forests and slaughter nations.

Besides, in his past life, he really had incurred boundless karmic sin, and that towering resentment...

"Stop!" Wen Jingge immediately yelled, halting him. "Liang Si! Don't forget how you died in your past life."

Liang Si snapped out of his daze. He had no desire to repeat the events of his past life.

Yet why would his master bring this up at a time like this?

"Master..."

Wasn't his master supposed to have already, already perished back then?

"Remember what you came back here to do, and do not touch what shouldn't be touched! Think of the price you paid to come back!"

"This disciple knows his wrong." Liang Si lowered his head.

During this period, the only time he had felt any sense of confidence was when he found Wen Jingge and realized she was still alive; ever since then, he had remained listless and dejected.

He would do whatever Wen Jingge told him to do, much like a stray puppy that would guard the house in exchange for a morsel of food. Of course, the only nourishment he desired was a single glance from Wen Jingge.

"Go on down!" Wen Jingge breathed a sigh of relief, afraid he might overthink things. "Go stand guard above. You're not suited to stay down here right now. Keep watch upstairs and don't let anyone take advantage of the situation."

"...Alright." Liang Si knelt on the ground. "This disciple knows it will be difficult, but I still wish to beg Master to forgive the wrongdoings of my past. From now on, this disciple will obey Master's every command. Master... if at all possible, try not to return to the Xuanyun Sect!"

"I know." Wen Jingge nodded. "Rest assured! The events of the past life will not repeat themselves between you and me."

"Qiao Yu, now it's Qiao Yu." A look of release crossed his face, and though reluctant, he added, "The present Qiao Yu has done no wrong. If Master finds him troublesome, you may punish this disciple instead."

"Am I giving you too little to do on ordinary days?" Wen Jingge was left speechless, shooing him upward with both hands like driving ducks. "If you dawdle any longer, the moon won't be this round anymore. Do you want your Grand Master to become a normal person or not? You're so young, can you not be so long-winded?"

"Disciple..."

Before he could finish his sentence, Lu Wei punched him flying out of the room.

Wen Jingge: ...

"What are you looking at! I'm helping you!" Lu Wei said sheepishly.

"Fine, I get it." Wen Jingge said no more and opened the coffin. "Do you remember the one inside my head who refers to herself as the Honored One?"

"Are you saying that the way she vanished is the same way I need to make the will growing inside this body disappear?"

"Pretty much. The memories you lost should be right here with him."

Wen Jingge first extracted the piece of wood embedded between the corpse's thigh bones. The moment the wood was pulled out, the two bones snapped together like magnets, looking utterly bizarre.

"If he's the one left behind in the end, will I disappear?" Lu Wei looked into Wen Jingge's eyes. At that moment, he wanted to hear a lie, but unfortunately, Wen Jingge didn't catch his drift.

"You will. After you die, I'll take this body and go look for the treasure you left behind."

"Will he listen to you?"

"It's fine, A-Cai can beat him!"

In that instant, Lu Wei felt there was no love left in this world. Instead of grieving, he smiled. "From now on, remember to always be this happy."

"Come here, I'll tell you a secret."

Lu Wei leaned closer.

Wen Jingge said nothing.

He leaned even closer. The exact moment his soul completely merged into Wen Jingge's body, he felt himself fall under her control.

"Me and A-Cai, you and the crystal coffin."

A flash of insight crossed his mind, but before he could make sense of it, he had already been shoved into that crystal coffin.

The last restriction on the armored man lying in the coffin was undone, and his blue eyes shimmered like starlight reflecting on a clear lake, breathtakingly beautiful. Before he could even open his mouth, he closed his eyes once more.

As a biting chill washed over him, Lu Wei gradually lost consciousness. Amidst the haze, he seemed to hear Wen Jingge's voice.

"Did you really think I didn't know where your treasure was? This coffin looks no different from ordinary ice, but it's worth a fortune. If I put you and A-Cai together, wouldn't this coffin be freed up?"

"Wow! I actually came up with such a brilliant idea, I truly am a genius!"

"..."

Lu Wei desperately wanted to retort, but thinking of the path Wen Jingge would henceforth have to walk entirely alone, his heart softened with reluctance.

He wanted to say something more, but this time, he truly plunged into an eternal slumber.

In his dream, he seemed to return to the past.

By the campfire, he spotted that familiar woman. Though he could only see her back, he could never mistake the bow and arrow slung across it—a bow he had once retrieved from Wang Xi.

"Hey!" He stood up and walked toward the woman. "Are you leaving with the Moon-Shooting Clan?"

"The White Deer tribe commits countless injustices and will be exterminated sooner or later," the woman glanced at him with disdain.

A scrap of cloth covered her face, revealing only a pair of rebellious eyes—eyes the color of a blue lake, entirely unlike those of the White Deer people.

"Lu Wei?"

"I am." Vaguely, Lu Wei remembered that this woman should be several hundred years older than him, and like his former self, she was a war machine cultivated by those people.

"This pair of eyes." The woman opened her palm, and resting right there in it was the pair of lake-blue eyeballs he had just seen earlier. "I'll leave them with you."

"What do you mean?" Many people had died at Lu Wei's hands, but he had always viewed such things as taboo and possessed no habit of collecting trophies.

"Perhaps I will die." The woman tore off a strip of her sleeve to blindfold her own eyes. "But I cannot wait for that day. This pair of eyeballs..."

When Lu Wei looked back at her palm, the eyeballs were already gone. "You..."

"Perhaps it will take a very long time, but someone will come looking for you to take them back."

With those words, the woman vanished into the night within the territory of the White Deer tribe.