Chapter 41: If You Can’t Get Married in the Future, Just Let Him Have It!
When Jiang Li was thirteen, she realized a truth—there are no deities in this world, and thus no deity would respond to her prayers.
The room was dark without lights, and through the gap in the cupboard door, she could only see shadowy figures passing by the wardrobe, moving back and forth inside the room, rummaging around.
Their movements were very light, making minimal noise, but at such a moment, even the slightest sound felt like the whisper of d*ath.
She bit her lip tightly, curling her petite body in the corner of the wardrobe, her hands covering her eyes, daring not to move as she fixated on the cupboard door, her mind racing with various desperate thoughts.
They might be debt collectors looking for her father, just like those who had come by not long ago.
They could just be thieves, who would leave if they found nothing valuable.
Or perhaps my room is big enough, and they wouldn’t notice the wardrobe hidden behind the door.
…
Just as Jiang Li was lost in her thoughts, the eerie voices of those strange people emerged from the darkness.
“Have you all searched? She couldn’t possibly not be here, right?” said a hoarse male voice.
“She’s here, according to the divination results, she must be hiding!” replied someone coldly, and it was unclear whether it was a man or a woman.
“Oh? Hiding, is she? Looks like our little cutie wants to play with us! So, should we give her a little surprise? Hehe!”
Another man, whose speech was somewhat unclear, expressed himself with a strange mania and excitement.
“Take it easy; she’s an important sacrificial offering for this ceremony. We need to keep her alive at least.”
…
They really are coming for me! In an instant, all of Jiang Li’s desperate thoughts shattered.
The strange people in the room were still discussing, but she couldn’t hear a word clearly, her ears ringing as if something had exploded nearby.
Her heart raced, her neck felt as though it were being squeezed by an invisible hand, tightening little by little, making her breathing difficult as if she were suffocating.
Uncertain how much time passed, the strange people seemed to give up and left the room, their footsteps fading away.
Once the room fell silent again, Jiang Li dared to gasp for air, leaning on the cupboard door, carefully pushing it open slightly to look outside.
The room was pitch black, and those strange people had vanished.
After waiting a moment and seeing no abnormalities outside, Jiang Li slowly pushed open the door and cautiously crept out.
As soon as her feet touched the ground, she stepped on something.
It was cold, slippery, and fragile, like some kind of insect. As Jiang Li stepped on it, it went “poof!” and splattered a mass of sticky liquid.
The tiny sound startled something like a slumbering demon awake, and an unsettling rustling immediately echoed from every corner of the room, as if countless bugs were rapidly crawling in the darkness.
At that moment, a dazzling flash of lightning tore through the sky, dispelling the darkness.
“Ah—!”
In an instant, the young Jiang Li saw a horrifying scene; her pupils constricted sharply as she hugged her head and let out a terrified scream.
Cockroach-like creatures of all sizes covered the entire room—on the floor, walls, ceiling, and even on her feet and calves…
In the dense swarm of bugs crawling everywhere, it felt as though a living brown carpet had been laid out.
Her scream echoed far in the empty Amber Hall, and soon thereafter, the footsteps in the hallway sounded like a d*ath sentence, mixed in with those strange people’s mocking laughter.
“Hehe, I knew she was hiding in a wardrobe!”
“Our little cutie must be terrified by my pets, right? Did you hear that? Her screams are so delightful!”
Though still young, Jiang Li’s unyielding nature was already evident.
Listening to the approaching footsteps in the corridor, she suppressed her fear, closed her eyes to avoid seeing the creeping bugs, and took rapid steps toward the balcony.
Jiang Li, you can do it; those bugs aren’t that scary, the third floor isn’t too high, and the bushes below will soften your fall. The nearest police station is less than a thousand meters away.
As long as I push open the glass door and jump out to reach the police station, I can escape the danger!
Jiang Li comforted herself while stepping through a swarm of bugs.
Throughout the process, she was scared and crying, her pale face marked with tear stains, yet she bit her lip tightly and didn’t let out even a whimper.
The short seconds it took to cross the room felt like a century.
“Click—!”
As the balcony door opened with a soft sound and a cold drizzle swept in, looking down from the edge of the balcony, the young Jiang Li hesitated for a moment at the seven to eight-meter drop.
The hurried footsteps in the hallway indicated that those malicious strange people were quickly approaching.
Without time to ponder, Jiang Li climbed onto the railing, took a deep breath, covered her head with her arms, and jumped forward.
The moment she leaped from the balcony, the bugs in the room seemed to sense something and suddenly took wing all at once, rushing after her like a flood breaking through a dam, shattering the balcony’s glass door, sending sharp shards everywhere as they surged out.
“d*mn it! She’s trying to escape!”
“It’s all your fault for wanting to play around!”
“Stop talking! When we catch her, I’ll make sure to have some fun with her! I swear, she’ll stay conscious the whole time!”
…
The shrubs below the balcony had long gone unmanaged, growing wildly in this rainy season.
As Jiang Li fell from the balcony, her arm scraped against the wall, her clothes and pants snagged on branches, leaving her muddy and covered in leaves.
Ignoring the pain wracking her body, she stood up, ready to take a step forward, only to find her right leg was already numb. Turning back for a glance, her hard-earned composure shattered, and she couldn’t help but cry out loud.
Her right calf was pierced by several branches of varying thickness, and bright red bl**d gushed out, mingling with the rainwater and flowing into the filthy ground.
Above her, the bugs that had circled around Jiang Li, monitoring her every move, caught the scent of bl**d, stirred by their vicious instincts, buzzing wildly as they dove toward her right calf.
A sharp pain hit her, and it was as if the bulb in her vision blew out, plunging her into darkness.
She collapsed into the cold muddy water, breathing rapidly as though an ice block had lodged in her chest, while her forehead grew hotter.
Darkness, fear, and pain surged together, like a ferocious beast opening its jaws, shattering her consciousness into fragments…
————
When Jiang Li woke up again, she found herself confined in a dark dungeon of the Solar Eclipse Society’s base.
The entire dungeon was less than two square meters in size, and she could only curl up against the wall in a corner.
There was a small skylight opening at a slant above, allowing a sliver of light to filter in only at noon.
Most of the time, the dungeon was eerily silent, broken only by the sounds of spiders weaving webs and droplets of water falling intermittently from the ceiling.
Occasionally, something furry would scurry past her, likely a rat or similar creature, and as she hurriedly dodged, their long tails would brush against her instep or palm, cold and slippery.
Her calf’s wound had been treated roughly by the Solar Eclipse Society members, but it was clear they hadn’t taken such care with the totem tattoo on her back, and the bandaging wasn’t tight.
Consequently, after a week of enduring pain in such conditions, her injury became infected, and soon below her right knee, she lost all sensation.
Despite this, her nerves remained taut, obediently consuming the food they provided, counting the moments of sunlight that fell each day to mark the dates.
When she reached one hundred twenty-seven, the dungeon door was finally opened again.
————
The man who entered had black hair and red eyes, looking to be around twenty-seven or twenty-eight, with a handsome yet slightly effeminate appearance, and an unmistakable air of arrogance about him.
Pushing a wheelchair, he was followed by a member of the Solar Eclipse Society dressed in red robes.
At the man’s gesture, the red-robed member picked up the barely conscious Jiang Li and placed her in the wheelchair, which the man then pushed down a dark corridor.
Along the way, the man spoke constantly to Jiang Li.
“You look like a smart and strong child, and you’re also quite lucky—fortunate to possess incredibly high potential for spirit energy.”
“Do you know what that means? It means you can become our companion!”
Jiang Li, “…”
She was too weak, too long without speaking; when she opened her mouth, she couldn’t make any sound. All she could do was glare fiercely at the man to express her rage.
The man didn’t seem angry about her glare; he just smiled and said, “Do you hate me? That’s fine; you’ll thank me later.”
And then, silence fell.
Ten minutes later, they traversed the long, dark corridor, and a vast space suddenly appeared before her, or rather, a cavern.
Several members of the Solar Eclipse Society dressed in red robes were moving through the massive cave, meticulously sketching complex spell patterns on the ground with some form of biological bl**d.
In the forefront lay a half-centaur corpse, surrounded by flickering blue flames from candles.
In one corner of the cave loomed a creature about twice the height of an adult, covered in numerous deformed limbs, roaring ferociously.
Jiang Li felt that she would never forget the terrifying scene upon first witnessing that urban legend, born from a failed ritual.
Its fearful visage bore a hint of humanity, yet its eyes had become beast-like, its throat emitting hair-raising sounds as if it were hungry, ready to pounce on the Solar Eclipse Society members nearby to rip their throats out.
Its skin was fragile, resembling aging paper; with the slightest tussle, it tore open multiple wounds, bl**d oozing out like a curtain that cascaded down, but its vitality was so strong that it wouldn’t d*e from the loss of bl**d, only continually suffer from pain.
When those members of the Solar Eclipse Society used huge iron hooks to ensnare the beast’s neck and shoulders to drag it away, an utterly terrified Jiang Li was placed in the prepared ritual altar’s center, alongside the half-centaur corpse.
The man gently stroked her forehead and said, “Good luck!” before spilling a massive amount of primordial spirits, activating the altar.
It wasn’t until later that Jiang Li joined the Siye Society, where she learned that the primordial spirit used in that ritual was equivalent to nearly a hundred lives.
At that time, the various rituals of the Solar Eclipse Society were not as refined as they were now; often, during the ceremony, they would madly add various potentially useful spirit energy materials.
It was an extravagant waste, yet they didn’t care; they only sought the small probability of an evil miracle, forging dreadful powers that existed in legends.
Standing at the center of the altar, Jiang Li found herself surrounded by darkness, in a void defined by flowing light beneath myriad bubbles.
At times, in flashes of lightning, visions of deserts, oases, deserted islands, steel cities shrouded in thick smoke, and burning giants flickered before her eyes…
Countless mirage-like scenes appeared and vanished, and finally, everything faded to black.
In the darkness, the neighing of a white horse rang out from a distant place, its mane fluttering in the wind like a flag, merging into her body in the end.
The ritual of the Solar Eclipse Society preliminarily succeeded; they created a miracle—they used an ordinary half-centaur, a girl with potential for spiritual ability, vast amounts of primordial spirit, and various bizarre spirit energy materials to simulate a trace of divinity, tracing the spirit patterns of a mythological species.
Yet they were not satisfied; what they wanted was to create a true mythological species.
However, just as they prepared to use Jiang Li, who had already become a spiritual ability user, for the next attempt, an unexpected event occurred.
A man dressed in red smoothly infiltrated their ranks while every member of the Solar Eclipse Society was focused on the ritual.
When the ceremony was about to advance further, the man suddenly threw back his hood, tore off his mask, raised a silver d*ath-Owl Badge in one hand and a long kn*fe that he had pulled from who knows where in the other, jumping to Jiang Li’s side and shouting at the Solar Eclipse Society members.
“Members of the Siye Society Special Action Team conducting a case, everyone get down with your heads covered!”
“d*mn it, I’m talking about you!”
“Hey! Still want to resist? Curved Light Warning!”
“Boom—!”
At that moment, the young Jiang Li had no understanding of what the Siye Society was.
Nor did she know that ordinary people wouldn’t use the serial number fifty-seven high lethality spell to warn others. More so, she didn’t know that instantly casting the fifty-seventh spell without chanting was an utterly frightening thing…
All she knew was that she was saved.
That man rescued her, wiped out that Solar Eclipse Society base, and placed her in a humble dwelling, telling her that soon, Ahua would come to take care of her.
Before leaving, the man cooked her a meal, which was boiled instant noodles.
Having grown up eating luxurious foods, Jiang Li’s first thought of the best food in the world was boiled noodles. A surge of mixed emotions rose within her, prompting her to break down and cry uncontrollably.
Faced with such a situation, the man fumbled for comforting words, but the more he spoke, the more she cried.
Finally, in a fluster, he seemed to have an idea and suddenly said, “Little girl, are you worried that your leg will be lame and you won’t be able to get married? If that’s the case, leave this matter to me!”
Jiang Li’s crying abruptly stopped at his words, momentarily stunned, thinking she was jumping from the tiger’s den into the dragon’s lair, swaying with half-eaten noodles in her mouth.
Seeing this, the man hurriedly clarified, “Little girl, don’t misunderstand me; I’m not suggesting you marry me, but I have a son about your age, so if you really can’t get married later, just let him have you!”
Jiang Li looked at the handsome man before her and thought of his saving grace.
Well, he’s a handsome uncle, his son shouldn’t be ugly either, and she wouldn’t have to slave away in her next life but could dedicate this life instead.
So she slurped up the noodles and solemnly nodded.
“Mm-hmm!”
“By the way, uncle, I still don’t know your name; how can I find you later?”
“Oh, me? I’m known in the Jianghu as Mudan Street Yanzu. If you’re interested in joining the Siye Society later, just come to Huacheng and ask around. Everyone will know!”
…
However.
Six months later.
After Jiang Li joined the Siye Society and completed her training to be transferred to Huacheng, she didn’t find any Mudan Street Yanzu but instead discovered an underground Cengxin…
————
When Luxianbei brought over the second bowl of noodles, Jiang Li snapped back to reality, looked up, and stared directly into her eyes, saying, “Luxianbei, I remember your family lives on Mudan Street, right? Did your father have some special nickname when he was young?”
Upon hearing this, Luxianbei’s hand holding the bowl trembled slightly, her expression remained unchanged, and she replied, “Here we go again; I already told you when I was at the South Suburb Slaughterhouse, didn’t I?”
“I don’t know anyone named Luxianbei; why do you keep asking that question? Can’t we have a good time together?”
“Oh?” Jiang Li raised an eyebrow, a sweet smile appearing on her face, pointing to the instant noodles Luxianbei held, “But didn’t you just say this was the secret recipe for the old Lu family’s instant noodles?”
“!!!”
Luxianbei’s hand trembled again, spilling half the bowl of soup, not knowing whether it was because of Jiang Li’s smile or her words.
Oh no! Did I really say that?
d*mn it, when it comes to the family recipe, I got too proud and accidentally let it slip.
Now I can only…
“Did I say that? What I meant was the old Wang family’s secret boiled noodles, right? You got hurt just now and got caught in the rain. Your head must not be too clear; you misheard! Yes, that’s it!”
There are no witnesses or evidence. As long as I refuse to acknowledge it, even the King of Heaven can’t do anything about it. Luxianbei thought.
“Is that so?” Jiang Li tilted her head, “Then do you know someone nicknamed Mudan Street Yanzu?”
Luxianbei, “…”
What in the world? What’s going on?
How does she even know the nickname my neighbors gave me when I was little?
What am I supposed to do now?
