Elvis clenched his fists tightly for a long time before finally yielding to Gu Mengmeng’s tears.
He embraced her and took a deep breath. “I want to protect your smile, but always end up making you cry… I am still too weak.”
Snake’s last words to him were like a hammer hovering over his heart. Every time Gu Mengmeng endured any suffering, it would strike down upon him viciously.
Gu Mengmeng shook her head. “You are already doing very well… really very well…”
“But you are still crying.” Elvis held Gu Mengmeng’s little face tenderly. He kissed away her tears and looked into her reddened eyes. He said in a voice laced with both warmth and exasperation, “You know I am helpless against your tears, yet you are crying to force me to give in.”
Wabei walked over and snorted. “Have you all finished your dilly dallying? Are we still going to retrieve the Soul of the Forest?”
Gu Mengmeng turned her tear-streaked face towards Wabei. “Aiyo little shit, you didn’t die…”
Wabei gritted his teeth. “I said before that the only person who can kill me was destroyed by you. So of course I didn’t die.”
Gu Mengmeng nodded. “Yes, people say that baddies can live up to a thousand years… so you have at least another 200 years to go.”
Wabei discovered that he had no advantage at all when faced with Gu Mengmeng.
He could not win her in either a physical fight or a verbal exchange. In the end, he just rolled his eyes in irritation and kept quiet.
But Gu Mengmeng had stopped crying after Wabei’s jibing.
Sniffling, she observed her surroundings to discover that they were no longer amongst the blood vines. “Have you all been on the road while I was unconscious?”
Elvis shook his head. “We dare not move you unnecessarily while you were unconscious, in case anything happened. So we stayed put at our original location.”
Stayed put at their original location?
Suspicion rose in Gu Mengmeng.
A crystal-clear scenery surrounded them, so pristine that one dared not even touch anything for fear of tainting that purity.
Where had that malevolent forest of blood vines gone?
If the area overtaken by the vines was akin to a blood-drenched webbed cave, then this place was like a palace upon the Jade Lakes in the ninth heavens.
If one looked closely, it was not hard to see that these crystal-like vegetation looked very much like those blood vines…
“This…” Gu Mengmeng stared in a daze for some time, before recalling that right before she fainted, streaks of bright red liquid had gathered in her palm.
She opened her hands to find that the wounds had been completely healed. Not even the tiniest scar was left behind.
Gu Mengmeng mumbled woodenly, “So it wasn’t just a hallucination from being injured. I really absorbed all the blood in those vines into my own body? I… when did I become so hardy?”
Elvis didn’t see the entire process, but he did witness her absorbing the last three vine chrysalis. He couldn’t help feeling worried as he noticed her staring dumbly at her own hands. “Are you feeling any discomfort?”
Gu Mengmeng shook her head. “At that time, I just felt as if an immense power was entering my body. That feeling has gone.”
Elvis heaved a sigh of relief. “Everything here is so bizarre. We shouldn’t linger on. We must quickly accomplish our task and head home after retrieving the Soul of the Forest.”
Gu Mengmeng nodded in assent. Elvis carried Gu Mengmeng and stood up, intending to continue on the pathway. But those crystal-like vines were full of brambles and thorns, effectively blocking up the way. It was as if they were purposely impeding their progress.
