This Damned Thirst for Survival

Young children crying helplessly in the fire.

“Father, Mother, I am afraid ……”

“Poe!!!”

The cries of despair resonate from every corner of Bujiu City.

Jiang Luo looks at it for a moment, then his gaze moves back to the soles of his feet.

The young master of the Chi family staggered out of the house, keeping his head up and staring after them.

The cold wind was harsh and sparks flew past Jiang Luo. Jiang Luo locked eyes with Chi You, who was in hot pursuit on the ground, and watched his handsome face grow fierce, his dark eyes tinged with blood.

Jiang Luo looks on in silence, staring at Chi You across the darkness of the night, which seems not far away.

Chi You stretched out his hand and the black mist spread from him, rushing swiftly high into the air, but not before Jiang Luo had reached his limit and could not go any further up.

The teenager’s arms are tense to the point of trembling as he stares dead on at Jiang Luo , chasing across the ground, stepping over stones, over rubble, over blood and bodies.

Jiang Luo is so far away that he can only see Chi You’s lips parting and closing as he keeps stubbornly saying something.

The wind did not carry his voice to Jiang Luo, but he read Chi You’s lips.

“Don’t leave ……”

“Stay.”

The whole world collapses as the lenses of the sky fall to Jiang Luo’s side before disappearing again. Jiang Luo is held by the evil spirit as he gets closer and closer to the black hole in the sky that has broken open.

He is still looking at Chi You.

Memories flashed quickly through his mind, from the teenager at the bridal chamber, to the ravioli stall, to the wretched way he stood between the crowds yesterday, framed and revolted by the curse.

The irritated killing intent that had just risen suddenly became complicated to say what it was like.

The young man in the mirror, Chi You, is a false presence, but Jiang Luo occasionally finds him too real.

He and the evil spirits are one and the same, and such a feeling strikes Jiang Luo’s mind even more often than not.

So this is what Chi You looked like as a child.

Jiang Luo does not like to let people know what he used to be like, what has happened to him. But Chi You saw the dirt on him and he saw the dirt on Chi You. They didn’t owe each other anything, so they could stop caring.

That hypocritical and ruthless evil spirit in the book turned out to be this kind of character, this kind of look, when he was a teenager he didn’t know.

It was as if the evil spirits had come to life.

Chi You chased him from Chi’s house to the bloodstained streets, his eyes dead on Jiang Luo as the two figures drifted further and further away from him, Chi You’s shoes stained with filth and the hem of his coat even more soaked with blood and scorched by flames as the ghosts wandered and the humans fled in fear.

His eyes were sore from looking at it, but he didn’t move for a single second to look away.

How can I?

How could Jiang Luo leave before he could find out the reason for his inexplicable emotions in Jiang Luo?

The beam was engulfed by the fire serpent and crashed heavily in front of Chi You.

Chi You tripped over a beam and fell to his knees unawares.

He froze and looked up, stubbornly at the figure in the air.

Who knows what’s in the heart of a young man? I have never seen the wind and the moon in my life, but I remember the rapid spring rain.

The dullness of the day was brightened by the presence of a wonderfully interesting person who both surprised and impressed Chi You, and whose interest could not help but be focused on him. Wanting to know what he was doing and what he was thinking.

Who is Jiang Luo? Did he see Chi You’s wretchedness? Was his cheek warm to the touch?

In a few short days, Chi You seems to have come to life. What the air smells like, what the flowers and plants smell like, the black and white, grey and decaying Chi You House becomes not so unbearable.

But after he had endured the excruciating pain of the curse reverberating through him, he was told that he had turned out to be false.

Jiang Luo, on the other hand, is the real deal.

He will leave, and Chi You will remain in the mirror world forever.

Chi You had thought he could keep him.

As more and more houses collapsed and Chi You was flanked by flying hot sparks, he looked up blankly, as if a piece of his heart was empty.

Was his hatred for the Chi family also fake?

Was the beating, the bullying, the starvation he had suffered since childhood also a lie?

The pain of the ghostly repercussions, the pain from the curse, everything and anything he perceived about this world, was it all a lie?

Why, then, is this feeling of desolation and coldness so real when he is faced with Jiang Luo’s departure?

Chi You heard cries from his side and he turned his head to see his father protecting his wife and son in a dead-end street, brutally killed and skinned by ghosts.

He sacrificed the lives of the whole city to try to keep just that one person, but he still failed.

Growing up, he never seemed to be successful in what he wanted to leave behind.

Everything he had done had turned out to be a joke.

Chi You looked up to the sky again.

The fire burns around him, but Chi You feels a little cold. He doesn’t know what these emotions are about and what they mean, but as he watches Jiang Luo move further and further away, he suddenly loses control of them and becomes a little broken.

He clenched his fists, his nails cutting into his flesh. His eyes were dry and red-blooded, helplessness and resignation sweeping through the teenager’s heart.

–Don’t leave.

Jiang Luo is still looking at the man on the ground.

The evil spirit behind him was also watching, and neither of the two made a sound.

Jiang Luo broke the silence and said to himself, “So this is what you used to look like.”

The evil spirit lowered his eyes, his side face a little cold, and he did not say yes or no, but gave a meaningless response.

Jiang Luo didn’t mind either, being so far away, his eyes were still sharp enough to see almost every expression on Chi You’s face.

Inch by inch he had seen Chi You’s demeanour, his movements, and the teenager’s obscure, unexplained fluctuations that he himself did not understand gave a hidden and high meaning.

Jiang Luo smiled abruptly.

His laugh was inexplicable and his look a little odd, but his smile reflected dangerously and decliningly in the sinful light of the fire, and the evil spirit looked at him sideways, his eyes searching.

“So that’s how it is, so that’s how it is,” Jiang Luo muttered to himself in words the evil spirits did not understand, “so that’s how it is.”

The evil spirit said, “So what was it?”

Jiang Luo picked up a smile that grew higher and higher. He obviously knew something the evil spirit didn’t already know, and the evil spirit inexplicably cared.

“Help me take the four men who came in with me as well and I’ll tell you what it is,” Jiang Luo said pleasantly, putting away his smile, “it shouldn’t be too hard for you.”

The evil spirit said, as if in exclamation or mockery, “So you are so kind.”

“It will be difficult for me if all the people who accompanied me to the mountain die,” Jiang Luo said lightly, “hurry up.”

The evil spirit raised his hand and several more fainting men flew up from the ground. Lian Bing was the most miserable, his body already half broken, and the others looked equally pitiful, all in a life-and-death situation.

Jiang Luo looked at them and then finally down at Chi You on the floor.

Dryly, he said, “Let’s go.”

They flew towards the sky where it had collapsed, the cries and despair gradually moving away from Jiang Luo’s ears. But as they were about to leave the mirror world, a voice suddenly rang out in Jiang Luo’s ears.

The voice, indistinguishable from male or female or age, seemed to come from a dream with an air of fuzziness and mystery.

“This is what sin looked like when it was first born.”

The voice said, “Even though the people of the city had only spoken out to shelter him during the day, when it came to his own selfish desires, he could have used the lives of the entire city as a sacrifice without mercy to get his own way.”

“Even if the evil spirits remain human, they will only create more sins.”

“Only when he is dead will everything be put to rest.”

It was the man behind the curtain who dragged him into the world of mirrors.

The voice was slow, calm, but firm. It smelled of truth and holiness, as if what “he” said was the most correct thing in the world.

Jiang Luo narrows his eyes.

It turns out that this is the scene that the man behind the curtain really wanted Jiang Luo to see.

The black-robed ghost is just a pawn placed on the surface by the other side, along with the collapse of the world and the reaction of the teenager Chi You, who was calculated by the man behind the curtain, who guessed what Chi You would do, and perhaps even that the evil ghost itself had infiltrated the mirror world.

— or even Jiang Luo would let Chi You chase after it, all in his plan.

Teenager Chi You Is it really just a false illusion?

Chi You is as real as a real person, how could his every move, along with his temperament and personality, have been missed by those behind the scenes?

How well he must have known Chi You.

Jiang Luo was silent, knowing that the man behind the curtain had not finished his sentence, and he was waiting patiently for him to continue. The more the other side said, the more information would be revealed.

But the evil spirit stretched out his hand and pulled it out of thin air in the emptiness of Jiang Luo’s ear.

Several thin filaments reflecting light appeared in his hands, the evil spirit’s eyes were cold, he looked along the filaments and said gloomily, “How dare you play such petty tricks in front of me?”

The wire looked as hard as steel, and the evil spirit’s palm slowly tightened as the wire broke from his hand.

The next moment, the evil spirit, holding Jiang Luo, abruptly rushed out of the mirror world.

*

Jiang Luo felt a pain in his jaw when he opened his eyes and the evil spirit pinned him to the bed with a smirk, “So what was it?”

The dark-haired young man who had just woken up and fallen into a state of jurisdiction was calm as he raised his eyebrows calmly and Yu Guang swept the perimeter.

Here was the bedroom, and it looked like it was still in the log cabin cottage, just wondering how many days he had slept there. It’s just a little surprising that the floor is charred black, the debris is piled up in the corners, the broken windows are nailed shut with a mess of wooden boards and the craftsman’s skills are extremely rubbish. The previously exquisite and beautiful villa had now taken on the appearance of a slum.

The evil spirit aggravated his tone, faintly displeased, ” Jiang Luo .”

Jiang Luo withdrew his eyes and placed them on his body.

The evil spirit’s handsome face was sullen and oppressive enough to be frightening.

Jiang Luo, however, slowly hooks up a strange smile that carries with it an endlessly dark danger.

He lay relaxed, not even caring about the pinned down position he was in at the moment, and said with a teasing and a few unsure tones, ” Chi You , so you ……”

The evil spirit looked at him sullenly.

Jiang Luo’s smile grew wider and wider, and he grunted twice, like a lustful ghost with a sharp poison, and deliberately lowered his voice, “So you like me, huh?”