Chapter 339 Wiping Sweat

(Unbeknownst to me, it’s almost been a year, and this book has hit three million words, setting a new personal record for Old Lai! Thank you all so much for accompanying me all the way. Old Lai will keep writing the rest of the story for you, and will finish this book without cutting it off midway or botching the ending!)

His eyes opened. Under the soft light, what he saw was a very familiar bedroom. For an ordinary person, it would be clear they’d just woken up from a nightmare. But Li Yan hadn’t just had a single dream—whether going to school or locked in slaughter, it had all been that vivid, that familiar, so for a moment even he couldn’t tell if he’d just entered a third stop in the dream, like how the scenes had switched just now.

Right now his head was still groggy, there was a bit of a headache too, just without that tearing sensation like it was about to explode.

"Yurong?...Yue Yao?"

He tried calling out. He vaguely heard his own voice; it wasn’t loud. The bedroom door was closed and there was no one inside.

He felt a bit helpless and closed his eyes again, trying to calm himself. Whether he was in a dream or not, at least he had gotten out of the previous images...

With his eyes shut, the scenes of flesh flying and blades chopping reappeared before him, but compared to how realistic they’d been just now, they were blurrier now. Just now he had personally undergone it; now it was more like watching a 3D movie.

Even so, his breathing grew rapid again, and a fine sheen of sweat broke out on his forehead.—This was one of the scenes he least wanted to face to begin with; he wasn’t avoiding it now only because he had just practically gone through it once more.

No matter how shocking something is, the second time you experience it it’s bound to hit weaker than the first. Like the first exam, when they killed for the first time, but later the second, the third, the fourth...one after another, over and over, until they went numb, and his heart of absolute killing was forged. The reason it became Li Yan’s Heart Demon was simply that for a very long stretch afterward, he’d kept running from that part of his experience, sealing off that part of his memories.

In other words, after he debuted all he did was act as an Assassin. If he’d taken that as a kind of enjoyment, treated the earlier brutality as a happy experience, then he wouldn’t have had this particular Heart Demon, wouldn’t have been troubled by it so much. Of course, if that were the case, his mindset would’ve been a bit twisted too.

The feeling just now, compared to triggering the Heart Demon or narrating those memories, was far more intense; it was equivalent to personally going through it again, and one he couldn’t escape from—he didn’t break free until he was ready to verify things with his own death.

In his normal state, Li Yan would certainly have been driven mad by it, unable to control himself; but this time, his body and consciousness had both been in a state of losing control, and in the end it produced a kind of "fight poison with poison, two negatives make a positive" effect—like how someone who suffers a huge shock might go insane, but if they’re hit with another enormous shock while insane, they might actually become normal.

So at this point, he really was awake, and he was no longer avoiding those years of his past. He even kept his eyes closed and, starting from that "personally experienced" slaughter exam in the dream just now, lifted the veil on his sealed memories and began recalling that stretch of time scene by scene.

People are not grass or trees; who can truly be without feeling?

Even enemies and opponents who’ve been locked in a life-or-death struggle on the same battlefield for years will develop a sense of camaraderie. All the more so for a group of young people in a closed environment, going through the same things, facing the same fate.

That exam was meant to make Li Yan and the others overcome emotion, even erase their humanity. To make them realize that the friend of today might die by someone else’s hand tomorrow, might even die by their own hand, or that they themselves might die at a friend’s hands. In that case, if you don’t make friends, you won’t have that kind of torment. If you don’t invest feelings, you won’t hesitate to strike, won’t feel grief. And that was exactly how they’d been living all along.

But after one round of training after another, one exam after another, the number of youths who’d first arrived there together had dwindled lower and lower. Those who remained had grown older, had spent more time together; their fates were plain to see. Under those circumstances, even if the one who died wasn’t a friend you’d truly cared about, you’d still feel "when the rabbit dies, the fox grieves."

Since in the end they couldn’t avoid half of them dying off batch by batch, then why keep living like machines? Sometimes, dying at a friend’s hand feels better than dying at the hands of some familiar stranger.

Later on, quite a few of them, more or less, invested their feelings and had their own friends. Of course, friends in that environment didn’t go out eating, drinking, and having fun together or bragging and chatting; most of it was just exchanges of eye contact and a nod in greeting. There weren’t many chances or conditions for talking.

Li Yan had friends too, and since he lived to the end, that means he watched them die one by one, including sending some of them to their deaths with his own hands. His best friend at the time had also fallen under the muzzle of his gun in one of those exams!

This is why, when he later created his killer organization, he named it "Them"; it’s also another important reason why he didn’t want to recall or face those years.

And today counted as the first time he truly opened the door to those memories. With his eyes closed, following the images from just now, he went back through that period of his life...

...

Li Yan lay on the bed, motionless. In this moment, he felt a kind of weakness he’d never felt before! This weakness flowed from his spirit down into his flesh. He had only recalled a stretch of the past, yet it felt more exhausting than cutting down enemies in all directions, to the point that when he was done remembering, he didn’t even have the strength to lift his eyelids, and his whole body was soaked through with sweat.

The bedroom door opened, someone came in.

Not just one person. With his eyes closed, Li Yan could tell from the footsteps that one was Zhang Yurong, one was Yue Yao, and the other was... Yu Xiaodi?

By this point, Li Yan had basically confirmed that he was awake again, and had more or less figured out why he’d passed out. As for how he’d ended up back home, he was a little puzzled, but could still make sense of it—he guessed Yurong and Yue Yao had gone out by car to look for him when they saw he hadn’t come back for a long time. How long it had taken them to find him, he had no idea.

But why was Xiaodi here? Did Yurong call her over to help?

After those few previous incidents, whenever Zhang Yurong and Yu Xiaodi appeared at home together, Li Yan still couldn’t feel completely at ease. So now he didn’t speak or open his eyes—of course, that also had a bit to do with having no strength.

He’d lived in this room layout for over a year and was very familiar with it (before, he’d stayed in another bedroom with exactly the same setup). Just from their small, detailed steps, he could tell exactly where they went. Zhang Yurong and Yue Yao sat down on one side of his bed, while Yu Xiaodi sat down on the other side.

"Still not waking up..."

Hearing Yurong’s soft sigh, Li Yan knew he hadn’t just been out for a moment.

"Huh? He seems to be sweating a little. Is the quilt too thick? Or..." While the two of them were focused on whether Li Yan was moving, the attentive Yue Yao noticed, from a different angle, the not-yet-dried beads of sweat along his hairline.

As soon as she said that, both Zhang Yurong and Yu Xiaodi immediately leaned in and reached out to lightly touch his forehead and neck.

"He really is sweating..."

"Should we lift the quilt? Maybe turn the temperature down a bit?" Xiaodi said, reaching out to move.

Yue Yao stopped her. "No! What if he has a fever? Doing that will only make it worse!"

Yurong had already placed one hand on Li Yan’s forehead and the other on her own, using the most primitive way to feel whether he had a fever.

"I’ll go get a thermometer!" Yue Yao hurried out at a quick pace.

Listening to the three of them talking, realizing they were all worried about him, and breathing in their faint fragrances at such close range, Li Yan grew even more calm after the exhaustion. But his mind was still a bit listless, and he felt drowsy. — His earlier fainting hadn’t been real sleep; his brain had been in constant turmoil, of course that burned energy.

"He probably doesn’t have a fever, but..." As Yurong spoke, she lifted the quilt a little, tugged at his collar, and reached in to touch his chest. "He’s sweating on his body too."

Seeing her movements, Yu Xiaodi also stopped feeling embarrassed. She reached in from Li Yan’s waist and touched his back. Since it was pressed against the mattress, the sweat on his back was even more obvious. She pulled her hand out and looked at Zhang Yurong. "There’s a lot of sweat on his back too."

Yue Yao quickly came back. Hearing Yurong say he didn’t seem feverish but was sweating a lot, she thought for a moment and suggested, "Let’s wipe his body down. Maybe it’s like catching a cold—once you sweat it out, you get better quickly. But like this, he must be really uncomfortable, and having all that sweat left on him isn’t good either." She also handed over the thermometer.

"Then..." Yurong was slightly embarrassed. This kind of thing really ought to be done by her, as his wife. But Li Yan was a grown man; helping him take off his clothes and turn him over was a big project, and she’d probably have to struggle with it for quite a while if she did it alone. And since Yue Yao had once checked his body together with her, she’d already seen everything there was to see; having her help again wouldn’t be a big deal.

But right now, there was still an outsider here—yes, she counted Yue Yao as one of her own, and Yu Xiaodi as an outsider—which made it awkward. Yet Yu Xiaodi was also someone who’d had a relationship with Li Yan; strictly speaking, the most appropriate arrangement would be for her and Yu Xiaodi to do it together.

Yu Xiaodi wasn’t a slow kid either; she immediately saw the helplessness in Zhang Yurong. And Yue Yao also knew about what had happened between her and Li Yan—she’d been here that first night when Yurong brought Xiaodi back. Out of concern for Li Yan, she decided not to avoid the issue and said directly, "Sister Yurong, if you don’t mind, I’ll help you too! We all just want him to be more comfortable and wake up sooner..."

Yurong thought for a moment and quietly nodded.

Even though Li Yan’s eyelids felt heavy and he was about to drift off, he could still hear their conversation. He felt a bit guilty and really wanted to wake up then and there so they wouldn’t have to go through all this trouble. But his body just wouldn’t cooperate; he truly had no strength and was too lazy to move. He also thought that if he missed this chance, who knew when he’d ever again enjoy being taken care of by all of them together. Besides, something like this might bring them closer and ease some of the awkwardness between them, right?

(There will be another update today.) (To be continued. If you want to know what happens next, please log in to www.qidian.com. More Chapters are available. Support the author, support legit reading!)