The Immortal Species - Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Everyone turned to look at me in unison.

Gu Gu.

Wasn’t that the name I had just given them?

Tattooed Guy, in particular, had only just recovered from the sharp pain in the back of his head. Now his face went pale with fright all over again.

Big Beauty was so scared she backed away from me, while Little Glasses trembled as he checked to see whether I had a shadow.

Could it be that… something uncanny had already mixed in among them?

But I was most definitely alive.

In fact, I couldn’t even die.

Jian Yi’s expression turned odd for a split second as well.

But she quickly regained her composure. “What are you afraid of? This is just the instance trying to scare people. For all we know, we’ll find graves and tombstones with all our names on them in a moment.”

But we didn’t.

Everyone searched around, but the rest of the wild graves had no names.

Only this earthen mound had a tombstone, and only it had words carved into it.

It was as if it were targeting me alone.

Or rather, as if someone had been waiting for me.

Before we knew it, the surrounding fog was growing thicker and thicker.

It settled over our skin, wet, cold, and bone-chilling.

Jing Yuzhou was clearly uncomfortable. “Xiao Yi, it’s about to get dark. Let’s find somewhere to settle down first.”

Jian Yi nodded in agreement and started down the mountain.

Tattooed Guy immediately panicked. One hand was still pressed to the bleeding back of his head. “Stop! Give the Jade Register back! We found it first!”

Then he turned and roared at Little Glasses, “Idiot, what are you standing there for? We’re on the same team! They’re about to steal a key clue from us! Go find a weapon!”

“Oh-okay!” Little Glasses finally began scrambling around the ground for rocks.

Jian Yi wasn’t afraid in the slightest.

She shot them an indifferent glance. “Listen, boys. Does the Jade Register have your names written on it? What makes you think I have to give it back?”

Then Jian Yi added, “Here’s a friendly reminder. As a big shot who’s already cleared eight instances, I have quite a few items on me. You’d better be careful and not think about taking it by force.”

Little Glasses and Tattooed Guy instantly froze, wavering.

But I stepped forward.

For no other reason than this:

The Jade Register very likely did have my name written on it.

After all, that guy from a thousand years ago had dared to steal my clothes for a joint burial and even called me “my beloved wife.”

Whatever came after that was definitely even less fit for the eyes.

If this had happened before I was two thousand years old, I certainly wouldn’t have cared.

Compared to interfering in the mortal world, I preferred to become a great tree and quietly watch the clouds gather and scatter.

But thanks to that shameless bastard, I learned what it meant to give an inch and have someone take a mile.

So now I preferred to hold a big stick in my hand and beat him until chaos erupted.

“Give it to me.” I reached out. “That thing is dangerous. Holding on to it won’t do you any good.”

Jian Yi looked at me with an expression that said, Are you insane? Then she ignored me completely.

Her high ponytail swept through the air in an arc as she headed into the thick fog down the mountain with Jing Yuzhou.

Just then, two tender children’s voices drifted out of the dense fog, accompanied by the sound of bells-

“Too tired to walk, too trapped to flee, on the road to the Yellow Springs, never turn to see…”

“Open your hand, hand over the flower, and we’ll send you down to the underworld’s bower…”

The voices didn’t come from any one direction. They seeped into everyone’s ears from every corner of the fog.

Tattooed Guy, Big Beauty, and Little Glasses huddled together in terror, their teeth chattering.

The fog churned, and two tiny figures emerged from within.

One was a boy and the other a girl. Both wore festive red, front-closing padded jackets and had their hair tied in children’s topknots.

In the center of each forehead was a bright red round mark dotted in cinnabar.

They wore smiles, but those smiles were stiff, and the arcs of their stretched lips were exactly the same.

At first glance, they looked like two lucky children who had stepped down from a New Year print, yet they gave off an indescribably eerie feeling.

Their little hands were tightly clasped together. They tilted their faces up and spoke in unison:

“Big brothers, big sisters, please be kind. Can you give us a little white flower?”

A little white flower? Where would flowers come from in this barren mountain graveyard?

Everyone instinctively looked down. At the very edge of visibility, among the weeds, there really were dense clusters of white flowers blooming.

Jian Yi coldly spat out two words. “We can’t.”

With that, she pulled Jing Yuzhou around the two children and walked into the thick fog without looking back.

But less than ten seconds later, the fog churned again, and Jian Yi and Jing Yuzhou walked back from the very direction they had left in, their faces full of astonishment.

Refusing to believe it, Jian Yi pulled Jing Yuzhou and tried to break out in another direction, but the result was exactly the same.

A ghost wall.

It seemed that unless they satisfied these two little ghosts’ request, no one would be leaving this mass grave.

The patience of a young master like Jing Yuzhou had clearly run out. He tugged irritably at his tie. “Isn’t it just a damn flower? Just give it to them and be done with it!”

He strode over to the weeds, snapped off a white flower, and tossed it in front of the girl. “Take it and get lost!”

“Heeheehee…”

The girl suddenly let out a burst of bell-like laughter and picked up the flower. “Thank you, big brother!”

The next second, Jing Yuzhou’s body swayed. His complexion visibly worsened, and the color drained from his lips.

“Yuzhou!”

Seeing this, Jian Yi immediately supported him, distress flashing across her face. “You idiot, why would you act so recklessly?”

As she spoke, Jian Yi quickly unzipped her waist pouch, took out a bamboo tube, poured out a pitch-black pill from inside, and swallowed it.

[This is it! The reward item Master Jian obtained in her first instance-the Prophecy Pill!]

[It can predict some of an instance’s rules for a short period of time. You could call it an overpowered cheat item.]

[But the number of pills is limited. Jian Yi is almost out of them too, right? What is she going to do after that?]

Jian Yi’s expression changed. “I understand now… We can’t give them flowers! Giving away one flower means giving away one year of your own lifespan!”

Jing Yuzhou’s face turned even uglier.

In other words, just now, for no reason at all, he had lost a year of his life?

Who could possibly take that?

“Waaah…” The boy beside her suddenly puckered up his mouth. “Not fair! Little Sister got a flower, so I want one too! Big Brother, I want a flower too! Big Brother, I want a flower too!”

The shrill childish voice made the vein on Jing Yuzhou’s forehead throb. Unable to hold back, he lifted his foot and kicked at the boy. “Get lost!”

The boy didn’t dodge. Instead, he exchanged a glance with the girl, and an eerie, triumphant smile spread across both their faces at the same time.

The hands they were holding also began to slowly loosen.

“No!” Jian Yi instantly panicked and shouted, “You can’t let their hands separate! Once they separate, all of us die!”

But Jing Yuzhou’s foot was already moving with too much momentum. He couldn’t pull it back in time.

The grins on the Spirit Boy and Girl’s faces had nearly split all the way to their ears.

And right then, I yanked a tombstone out of the ground beside me and smashed it toward Jing Yuzhou’s waist.

“Bang!”

Jing Yuzhou was flattened to the ground by the stone slab.

That last kick of his skimmed the edge of the boy’s clothes and missed.

The crisis was temporarily resolved.

The eerie smiles faded from the Spirit Boy and Girl’s faces, and their hands, which had been on the verge of separating, clasped together again.

They even swung them a little, as if deeply disappointed.

Tattooed Guy, Big Beauty, and Little Glasses all gaped, their eyes practically bulging out of their sockets.

“Yuzhou!” Jian Yi cried out and rushed over, shoving the heavy tombstone off Jing Yuzhou.

She pulled the pale-faced Jing Yuzhou into her arms, then looked up and glared at me with hatred. “Fine. Very good. I’ll remember you.”

With that, Jian Yi reached into her waist pouch, pulled out a Brass Key, and turned it in the air.

In the next instant, Jian Yi and Jing Yuzhou’s figures distorted, then vanished.

[Holy crap! Wasn’t that the Arbitrary Teleportation Key? She actually has that too!]

[Ignorant, aren’t you? Our Master Jian was chosen as a bride by the Big Boss in her second instance. To court her, he gave Master Jian a bunch of SSS-rank items.]

[No, wait, they just ran off like that? Leaving this mess behind? Aren’t they supposed to be strong?]

[Uh, who said strong people are obligated to help the weak? Chat, stop acting like saints, okay…]

[But I really didn’t expect this Gu Gu to be so strong when she looks so frail. Smashing someone with a tombstone was honestly not on my bingo card.]

[Gu Gu is done for. Master Jian holds grudges like crazy. The grass on the last person’s grave who got remembered by Master Jian is already waist-high.]

After Jian Yi and Jing Yuzhou left, the thick fog around us grew even denser.

The Spirit Boy and Girl slowly turned their heads as well, their huge pitch-black eyes looking at the remaining four of us.

This was their first instance. Unlike Jian Yi, how could they have some life-saving item to fall back on?

And if they wanted to leave, they had to give flowers.

But giving away one flower meant giving away one year of lifespan.

Who could know how many years they had left?

What if it was only ten years? What if… it was only one?

Little Glasses was so frightened his legs went weak, and he actually wet himself. “N-no, I don’t want to die yet. I still have to go back and see my wife. My wife is waiting for me at home…”

The stench of urine spread through the air, and the Spirit Boy and Girl smiled even more innocently.

“Hee hee hee! Big Brother, shame on you! Big Brother, shame on you!”

However, when the two little ghosts looked around at everyone, the only face they didn’t see fear on was mine.

The boy immediately became unhappy. “You… You’re the one who stole my flower.”

His voice drifted over, filled with resentment.

The girl chimed in too. “She’s a bad big sister! A bad big sister!”

The boy’s voice grew sharper and sharper. “Give it back! Give me a flower! Give me a flower-”

So noisy.

This was exactly why I hated bratty kids the most.

I walked straight over to the weeds at the edge of my vision and picked five or six little white flowers in one go.

Then I turned back and shoved them into the boy’s wide-open, screaming mouth. “Here. Is that enough?”

The boy froze at first.

Then vicious ecstasy spread across his face, and he mumbled indistinctly, “Not enough! Not enough! Give me flowers!”

Fine.

I nodded, went back to the weeds, and pulled them up by the roots, flowers, grass, and all, picking another dozen or so.

Then I stuffed all of them into the boy’s mouth.

When he tried to close his mouth, I pried it open for him.

As I stuffed them in, I asked, “Is it enough? Is it enough? Is it enough?”

Big Beauty’s face turned deathly pale watching from the side. She couldn’t help saying,

“Gu… Gu Gu, you… you do know that giving one flower means giving one year of your lifespan, right? Your lifespan… is it still enough?”

“No idea.”

I answered casually and continued manually spoiling the former flowers of the motherland.

[No way. Does this woman named Gu Gu not care if she lives or dies????]

[She can’t swallow this anger now, but once she gives away all her lifespan, she’ll be swallowing her last breath for real.]

[Suicidal personality type. Next.]

The wild joy and anticipation on the boy’s face gradually turned into confusion and bewilderment.

He didn’t understand. Why wasn’t she dead yet?

Why could she give away so much lifespan without caring at all?

The boy’s mouth was already stuffed full of flowers, grass, and mud. He made muffled “mmph mmph” sounds and shook his head to signal that I should stop.

But I didn’t care at all. I kept using his mouth as a flowerpot.

Then, seeing the girl staring at me in terror from the side, I casually stuffed a flower into her mouth too.

Since I was at it.

The girl was jabbed right in the throat by that one, and with a gagging sound, she burst into tears.

“Urgh-Good big sister, it’s enough! It’s really enough! I want to go home, waaaah…”

Only then did I stop.

“Fine. Then let’s go home,” I said.

The Spirit Boy and Girl instantly looked as if they had been granted a pardon.

The sobbing girl held the boy’s hand, whose cheeks were bulging full, and the two of them were about to turn around.

I silently followed behind them, placed my hands on their little shoulders, lowered my head, and said kindly,

“Little brother, little sister, is that your home?”

“It’s my home now.”