Chapter 488 - 304: Where Is Your Home?
A figure began to materialize in Yang An’s vision.
Unlike the members of the Golden Sword Sect he had seen before, what stood before him wasn’t just a shadowy figure, but a distinct person.
A woman.
The woman was dressed in blood-stained white clothes and sat on the ground, leaning against the trunk of a tree.
Blood gushed from her mouth, streaming down her neck and staining her clothes red. Her breathing was choked with it, making a sound like air leaking from a punctured balloon.
Yang An instinctively took a step back. They were very close—less than a meter apart.
The woman looked normal, aside from the fact that she appeared to be gravely injured.
But encountering a seemingly normal person in a place like Lower Hu was anything but normal to Yang An, and he was instantly on his guard.
The woman’s eyes were red, filled with blood. She looked at Yang An, then slowly reached out her hand.
Her hand was slender and fair, without an ounce of fat, but it was also covered in crimson blood.
Yang An watched her movements silently. Only after determining that the woman was no threat to him did he slowly speak.
"Who are you?"
"I... want to go home... Please... take me home."
The woman struggled to spit out a mouthful of blood, her words coming out haltingly and with great difficulty.
"Home?"
The woman was clearly asking for help, but Yang An couldn’t make sense of what she was saying.
The scene before him began to destabilize again, and the woman’s body started to blur.
Yang An struggled to stabilize his mind and consciousness.
"Who are you? Where is your home?"
"Home... my home is in..."
Another mouthful of blood gushed from the woman’s mouth. Black spots began to spread rapidly across her flesh.
The spots looked like bean-sized insects, crawling frantically all over her, swarming from her feet toward her head.
But her gaze shifted away from Yang An. She stared in another direction, her eyes vacant, yet tinged with nostalgia.
"Home is... in another world... I want..."
Before she could finish, the black spots had completely covered her. Her once fair and smooth skin turned black in an instant, and even her blood turned black.
Yang An seemed to realize something. He immediately placed his hand on the woman’s head, intending to transfer some of his Mana into her.
He didn’t know any healing arts, but he figured his Mana might sustain her vitality.
But the moment his hand touched the woman’s hair, the black spots found a new outlet. They surged up his fingers and instantly spread to his arm.
The woman was dead. Yang An snatched his hand back.
SQUELCH—
His palm had turned black, as if it had been glued to her head. As he retracted it, several black veins, vessels, and bits of flesh were torn from his blackened arm.
A glow emanated from Yang An’s hand, dispelling all the black spots, and his arm returned to normal.
It was only then that he realized something. ’It looked like she just died, but she might have just been an afterimage. There was no way I could have saved her.’
Still, the woman’s words left him hesitant and confused.
’Another world?’
’Does she mean the real world and the Xian Origin Land?’
As he mulled this over, the woman’s body collapsed. Her corpse decayed with incredible speed, melting into a puddle of foul-smelling sludge.
Even the tree she had been leaning against withered rapidly before his eyes.
The world in Yang An’s eyes grew extremely unstable once more. His time was nearly up.
This time, no matter how hard he tried to stabilize his consciousness, he couldn’t control it.
But just as the world before him was about to collapse, looking like it had been covered in a thick layer of pixels, a strange voice suddenly sounded in his ear.
"A World Body has perished. To think there’s another, unrecorded World Body here!"
In that instant, a hand shot through Yang An’s chest.
By the time Yang An saw the hand, he could no longer make out its shape. He only felt as if he had been struck by lightning. But as the inexplicable pain surged through him, the world before his eyes shattered.
The hand grasped at empty air. Everything in Yang An’s vision became like fast-flowing water, liquefying and streaming upward.
In contrast, he felt as if he were plummeting downward.
In the blink of an eye, everything stabilized. The world had returned to its familiar, all-encompassing gray.
Yang An was back in the Gray Scale.
He took a deep breath, a tearing pain coursing through his body, and stared at the bonfire burning before him.
His first trip into Lower Hu had been too short, but it hadn’t been for nothing.
A storm of questions now flooded his mind, leaving him unable to process everything.
The icy hand that had been clutching his Heart silently withdrew. A dead silence fell over the campfire.
After a long, quiet moment, Yang An’s thoughts finally settled.
He was alone by the campfire. Fu Ming was gone.
"Bow Lady, can I enter Lower Hu again?"
"You can, but until your spirit has recovered, the duration of your stay will be extremely short. You should rest."