Ji Ning still vividly remembered the scene the phantoms showed. He had waited, day after day, for Huo Wuling to come back. There were ghosts almost everywhere and he was so scared he hardly dared to move.
But waiting for him was worth it, because after that, Huo Wuling’s attitude towards him changed. If he had only been a pet to him before, afterwards he really started to care about him.
“Ningning was so cute back then.”
As the phantom shattered into darkness, Huo Wuling raised the corners of his lips, his eyes smiling, “So kind and obedient, all you cared about was me. It’s a pity you’re not like that anymore, playing with so many people behind my back.”
His gaze turned sharp, but Herinos just laughed and said, “Really? I think the current Ji Ning is much cuter, because now he’s showing his true self.”
“You only think that because you had such a bad time, right?” Huo Wuling’s eyes swept dismissively over him, “Ningning always wanted to get away from you. In the end, he finally chose to commit suicide just because he didn’t want to see you.”
“Oh? If that’s how we’re playing, then I’d also like to remind you of some things.”
The vampire raised an eyebrow, “Don’t forget, after we reunited with Ji Ning, he chose to rely on me just to get rid of you. Doesn’t that make you worse off than me?”
“But Ningning has always depended on me. We lived together for three years and slept together every night. What about you? Every time you approached him, he looked at you with cold eyes.” Huo Wuling laughed.
Herinos’s expression didn’t change, “Your fate is cursed and the people close to you are also affected. For Ji Ning’s sake, you’d better stay away from him, otherwise you’ll end up killing him.”
The two continued to sneer at each other as Ji Ning felt cold sweat drip down his back. In order to divert their attention, he hurriedly asked, “Hasn’t the illusion finished? What are you waiting for?”
“Soon.”
Huo Wuling glanced at him and shrugged, turning his eyes to the dark sky, “This place is breaking down, it’s almost completely contaminated.”
The overlapping ghost images grew larger. Black mist permeated everywhere, as the lights and shadows grew dim. The originally normal world suddenly appeared with a black border as the space inside collapsed and compressed.
Moments later, the illusion reappeared, inside what looked like an old TV screen. Once the static fizzled away, a scene emerged.
A dark haired boy stretched out his long legs, leaning back against a bed’s headboard as he read a book. A pale ghost stood silently at his side, a blank expression on his face. After a while, the teenager snapped the book shut and tilted his head to look up at the ghost.
“Ningning, I’m going to sleep.” He patted the vacant space next to him, his beautiful eyes curved up into a smile, “Come and sleep with me.”
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
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“Come on, relax.” The teenager couldn’t help laughing. He patiently helped the ghost to remember how living people went to sleep, then pulled the quilt over the ghost’s cold body, carefully tucking it around him.
He then turned off the lamp and lay down with his face pressed against Ji Ning’s shoulder. After a while, he turned the lamp back on and looked into Ji Ning’s open eyes, asking, “Can’t sleep?”
“En.”
Ji Ning responded. In the past, the teenager would have just put him in a corner, but now he said softly, “Let me help you fall asleep.”
He covered Ji Ning’s eyes with his hand and hummed a gentle tune in a low voice. He used a bit of his power, and after a while, Ji Ning really fell asleep like a living person. His eyelashes fluttered slightly in a deep sleep.
The teenager crossed his legs and rested his jaw on his hands, staring at Ji Ning’s sleeping face seriously. He carefully stroked his hair and poked at his translucent cheeks. A faint smile spread across his face. Although he was always smiling, this smile seemed different to his usual one.
“Back then I was really happy to have someone living with me.”
The real Huo Wuling spoke suddenly, “Someone who wouldn’t die unexpectedly and wouldn’t leave me. We could have stayed together forever, but unfortunately…”
His voice trailed off and he didn’t say anything else. His tone was light and he didn’t stop smiling, but Ji Ning’s heart still clenched and he involuntarily lowered his head.
The phantoms continued to change. Shadows overlapped as the boy gradually matured into a young man. His face was still beautiful and his every movement bewitching, but he was poisoned by the terrible scent of death.
He continued to raise Ji Ning using his own blood, but as time passed, he became more intimate with the ghost and had greater demands each time he fed him blood.
At first, he would ask Ji Ning to kiss him before happily cutting open his wrist to let Ji Ning lap at his blood. Later, he simply bit the tip of his tongue as they kissed, smearing his blood around Ji Ning’s mouth and drenching him in his scent.
“Come on, hug me.”
The dark haired man always relaxed in front of his ghost like a lazy cat. He loved to press himself against Ji Ning and often asked him for kisses and hugs.
Crack.
Suddenly, as the phantom Huo Wuling hugged Ji Ning, the ghost in his arms changed into a skeleton, who grabbed the man’s neck and strangled him to death. The skeleton then dissolved into a small bat that flew back to Herinos as the phantom illusion collapsed.
Herinos curled the corners of his lips but didn’t completely smile, “These past events aren’t worth watching.”
“Really? I’m quite enjoying it.” Huo Wuling replied, “Ningning and I were as sweet as newlyweds back then.”
“I’m more interested to see Ji Ning dig out your heart.”
Herinos waved his hand, causing the illusion to change. Images passed in a hurry, as if they were playing at double speed. Ji Ning gradually recalled the events of the time. As Huo Wuling once said, he’d really doted on him back then and wouldn’t even take him on any of his missions in order to keep him safe.
However, as Huo Wuling’s level got higher, the missions he participated in became more and more dangerous. When he felt he’d fed Ji Ning enough blood to be strong enough, he finally took Ji Ning on a mission, in preparation for a competition.
This competition was the highest level of the death game he was trapped in. As long as you won this competition, you had the opportunity to either return to the real world, or become part of the game’s management. This was the only way to get out of the game.
One of the conditions for participating in the competition was that any creature with thoughts or feelings brought in by a participant will automatically become a player and have to compete on their own.
However, the advantage to bringing in another player is that no matter which of them wins the competition, both of them will become champions together.
Because of these regulations, if he brought Ji Ning into the competition, his ghost would also become a contestant. Although Huo Wuling would always protect him, he was anxious to put Ji Ning at risk, so he did his best to improve the ghost’s strength as much as possible before the competition began.
Inside the competition, Huo Wuling was undoubtedly the strongest player in the game. As a result, the rest of the players united against him, wanting to kill him before the final winner was decided.
This was the major turning point of the original plot. If nothing went wrong, Huo Wuling would eventually be able to return to the real world. However, because of an accident, he could only choose to enter the management of the game. This accident was Ji Ning.
Ji Ning had to follow the development of the original story and deliberately let the other player’s plots against him succeed. He had been seriously injured, set alight with flames used to purify evil spirits, and was on the verge of dissipating.
The players intended to use him as bait in order to lure out Huo Wuling, but they hadn’t expected Huo Wuling to go insane. Every player involved was slaughtered, filling the competition field with corpses, their blood running through the grass like a river.
“Ningning, Ningning…”
Huo Wuling, who had worn a pleasant smile as he killed, now looked extremely fragile. He hugged Ji Ning, whose body was still burning, tears dripping down his bloodstained face.
“Don’t leave me…”
This was the first and last time Ji Ning saw him show such an expression.
Huo Wuling tore large wounds into his skin, feeding as much blood as he could into Ji Ning’s mouth, but the liquid spilled straight out again, making no difference to the ghost’s condition. Ji Ning sobbed in pain as his soul continued to burn, and slowly moved his hand towards Huo Wuling’s heart. The man noticed his movements but had no reason to defend against him.
Ji Ning had never been in so much pain. He knew that as long as he dug out half of Huo Wuling’s heart, he could complete the mission and leave this world. He reminded himself that Huo Wuling wouldn’t die, doing this would convince him to enter the game’s management, allowing him to reach a status close to a God. If he didn’t do this, he would be burned alive.
In the end, he plunged his hand into Huo Wuling’s chest and pulled out half of a bloodied heart.
The dark red blood stained Huo Wuling’s white shirt as he looked at Ji Ning blankly. There was no pain on his face, just confusion and disbelief. In the next second, Ji Ning’s soul was scattered and he was completely burned to ashes by the flames.
In the original novel, the ghost who Ji Ning took over betrayed Huo Wuling because it wanted to save itself by eating the man’s heart. It managed to dig out half of Huo Wuling’s heart, but in the end it wasn’t quick enough and its soul was scattered. In order to survive the injury, Huo Wuling had to choose to become part of the game’s management.
The phantom faithfully displayed this wretched past in front of them before it finally dispersed. Huo Wuling’s gentle smile didn’t change, as if he no longer cared about what happened back then.
Bang…bang…
The illusion suddenly shattered completely, the pervasive black mist becoming thicker, until the scattered black particles condensed together and gradually formed a figure.
The man that appeared wore a long, black robe. His face was handsome, with deep dark eyes and hair that looked stained black by the night. He was both familiar and unfamiliar to Ji Ning, because Ji Ning had only seen him as a younger man with blond hair and bright blue eyes.
The moment he saw Ji Ning, the man smiled and spoke in a low voice.
“Teacher.”
It was Lai.
I would actually love to read a whole novel about the game Huo Wuling and Ningning were trapped in, I feel like I haven’t seen enough of their story…
The next chapter begins the final arc of this novel and…ooh I love it so much – we finally get to see some of Ji Ning’s backstory!!!
Thank you for your hard work <3
God I am with you; Ji Ning’s and Huo Wuling’s story is so interesting!! I’d love to see what had happened during the mission!
I don’t need much, but I’m begging for some more backstory!!!
Same!!! I love infinite flow novels watching Ji Ning and Hou Wuling clean house would be so satisfying.
Ohh I’m really looking forward to Lia’s interaction with all the other protags!.
You want to see protagonist interaction huh? Then, the next chapters are dedicated to you~
YESSS I’m excited!!! ♡♡♡
Hua wuling’s backstory 😭 so his is most similar to ning’s, in that he’s from a modern world like ours and gets taken by some sort of system… (At least I’m assuming ji Ning is from the present time…) They’re story is so sad author why 😭 and ji Ning has had to die in such painful ways so many times 🥺. I’ve missed lai, he’s so dramatic I love it