Infinite Flow: Becoming a God in a Nightmare Game

Chapter 251 A Red Thread Binding the Soul, Unwavering Through Life and Death

Jiang Qi and Lu Zhi lifted the last piece of the fallen beam, and this was the scene they saw.

Lu Xue, whose face was as pale as paper, smiled and held the Soul-Suppressing Nail tightly in her hand.

Lin Wanchu stared blankly at the blood-red double happiness character pasted on the pillar, then suddenly chuckled and touched the coffin.

"It's going to snow," she said.

As soon as she finished speaking, she knelt down between the coffins and gently picked up her lover, who was already lifeless. The flounder pattern embroidered on his wedding dress was soaked in blood.

"Since we can't be born on the same day, month, and year, let's die on the same day, month, and year."

"Xiaoxue, is that alright?"

"Even if I have to go to the underworld, I will find you."

Lin Wanchu pressed her forehead against her lover's cold lips, and holding his hand, she plunged the Soul-Suppressing Nail into her heart.

Blood droplets rolled onto the eyes of the flounder in the wedding dress, and the pearl-embroidered eyes suddenly gleamed.

The heavy snow fell without warning.

Jiang Qi stared blankly at the two embracing corpses covered in snow, recalling the jeering they had made before entering the dungeon.

"Let's congratulate the newlyweds on their marriage."

The dragon and phoenix candles in the rubble suddenly reignited, and the candle wax was a bright red color.

Heavy snowflakes drifted down, penetrating the dilapidated rooftops.

Jiang Qi staggered and knelt before the coffin, unable to suppress the metallic taste in his throat any longer.

Blood dripped onto the snow, blooming into tiny red plum blossoms.

He saw that the blood hole in Lu Zhi's chest was healing at a speed visible to the naked eye, and there was a faint liquid flowing under the rolled-up flesh.

"The dungeon isn't over yet."

Lu Zhi wiped the blood from his lips, his voice as soft as a sigh.

The ruins of the ancient house gradually became transparent in the snow, and the mournful long tune of the suona could be heard in the distance.

Lu Zhi picked up half of the dragon and phoenix wedding candle, the candle wax congealing into blood-red amber in his palm. "Can you hear the suona? It's three-quarters past midnight, the ghost marriage procession is coming to pick up the bride."

Sure enough, faint music drifted from afar.

Jiang Qi wiped his face and stood up, only to find that the blue brick ground under the snow had turned into a bright red silk cloth, stretching all the way to the end of the darkness.

Dark red petals are growing wildly along the cracks in the ruins, like a tide of blood surging from the ground, instantly engulfing the roots of the century-old locust tree.

The long, slender, curled filaments unfurled in the evening breeze, like thousands of hands reaching out from the underworld, entwining the two pale shadows.

As Jiang Qi squatted down, a spider lily suddenly wrapped around his wrist.

The cool floral threads seeped into my pores.

He saw his shadow, reflected on the petals, suddenly split in two, with the other half pointing at him with a crimson smile.

Lin Wanchu lay quietly beside Lu Xue, their clasped hands covered by a brocade quilt shaped like mandarin ducks playing in the water.

Jiang Qi suddenly remembered what he had read in the folklore popular science book when he entered the dungeon: "The ceremony of a ghost marriage requires the harmony of yin and yang, and the sharing of life and death."

The snow fell silently.

Suddenly, Jiang Qi took out the pocket watch cover from his pocket, a red thread wrapped around his fingertip.

As Jiang Qi chanted his incantation, the red thread, as if alive, climbed up the clasped fingers of the two, wrapped around Lin Wanchu's pierced heart, and tied tightly to Lu Xue's wrist.

In this way, the three souls and seven spirits are all bound together, and even the King of Hell himself cannot separate them.

A soft, tinkling sound suddenly rang out in the snow.

When Jiang Qi opened his eyes, he found himself standing under the neon lights of a modern city.

The phone showed 3:17 a.m., and the pocket watch cover in my palm was still wet with snow.

"If we share the snow today, we can consider ourselves to have grown old together in this life..."

He looked up at the starry sky and smiled bitterly, when suddenly the Kunqu Opera "The Peony Pavilion" started playing on the advertising screen behind him.

When the beautiful young woman with flowing sleeves turned her head, a bright red cinnabar mole between her eyebrows was striking.

A familiar coughing sound came from the street corner.

The moment Jiang Qi turned around, he saw a man in a black turtleneck sweater standing under a streetlamp, with faint golden lines visible on his neck.

Moonlight splashed onto the cement ground. Jiang Qi stood frozen in place, watching Lu Zhi trample the moonlight as he approached him.

The crisp sound of the other person's shoes crunching over the dry leaves mingled with the night wind and filled his ears. The moonlight stretched the figure extremely long, almost wrapping around his ankles.

"Why don't you move?"

Lu Zhi's knuckles pinched his chin, the distinct knuckles digging painfully into him.

Jiang Qi raised his hand and placed it on the other person's chest. His fingertips trembled uncontrollably when they touched the raised scar. "Does it... hurt?"

Lu Zhi shrugged, wrapped his arms around Jiang Qi's waist, and suddenly tightened his arms, his warm breath brushing against Jiang Qi's ear: "It's just that your heart was pierced, it's nothing serious."

He ground his canine teeth against the pale blue veins on the back of the young man's neck, like a wild beast seizing its prey's most vulnerable spot. "But you, coughing up blood with every step, when you insisted on rushing forward to block the Soul-Suppressing Nails, did you ever think about how badly you would be shattered?"

Jiang Qi's lower back slammed against the cold brick wall, and the hem of his shirt was lifted by the night wind.

Monsters are born to be raw, bloodthirsty beasts; they have no concept of loving someone because of their loved ones.

They are merely following the obsession in their bloodline, like ferocious beasts guarding their nests, imprisoning what they consider their own possessions.

Under the moonlight, the gruesome wound was reduced to a faint scar, while the cut on the young man's finger from the broken tile was still bleeding—humans are such fragile creatures, even pain lingers on the skin for a long time.

They were just humans that his brother wanted to protect, so he could help save them as a matter of convenience.

Because they were the ones who protected their brother, and they were the ones who never abandoned him.

Therefore, there's no reason for them to get hurt.

Monsters' wounds can heal on their own, but human life is too fragile; if a serious injury is not treated in time, it can lead to death.

Lu Zhi buried his head in the crook of his neck, his voice muffled.

"We have half an hour left. Where should we go to find the truth?"

Jiang Qi raised an eyebrow, then flicked the snowflakes off his shoulder, the lamplight reflecting the starlight in his eyes. "The Prince's Cemetery."

The snowstorm returned.

A cold wind, carrying the scent of ink, swept past the street corner, and newsboys, like arrows released from a bow, pierced through the morning mist.

The strap of the faded canvas bag suddenly snapped, and yellowed newspapers wrapped around envelopes fluttered everywhere. Several of them landed on Jiang Qi's dark gray woolen overcoat, and the mimeographed words "Extra" bleed through the ink.

"Sir, be careful!"

Jiang Qi staggered backward from the impact and fell into a warm embrace.

The dust kicked up by the newsboy's straw sandals filled my nostrils, and the still-wet ink of the Morning Post fell like snowflakes. The four lead characters on the front page, "Liberation of Beiping," gleamed blood-red under the midday sun.

"I'm so sorry!"

A ruddy face peeked out from under the tattered felt hat, and beads of sweat trickled down the child's dark neck.

The child's hoarse voice was filled with icy coldness, and his dark knuckles gripped Jiang Qi's sleeve tightly.

His face, covered in coal dust, suddenly flushed red, the redness spreading down to his neck: "You, you are the second young master of the He family!"

His chapped lips trembled as he pulled a crumpled newspaper from the inside pocket of his cotton-padded coat. "Liberation! Beiping is liberated!"

With red eyes, the child stuffed the newspaper into his palm, and warm bloodstains appeared where his fingertips had rubbed against it, like a burning charcoal.

Immediately, Lu Zhi helped the newsboy pick up the mess on the ground. The yellowed envelopes were creased at the edges, and there were dark brown stains on the sealing wax seals—it was hard to tell whether they were dirt or dried blood.

As Jiang Qi bent down, he smelled the pungent smell of gunpowder on the envelope.

As my fingertips traced the folds, the rough texture was mixed with a few grains of sand, and for a moment it felt as if I were touching scorched earth mixed with shrapnel in a trench.

The newsboy suddenly shoved a whole stack of letters into his arms, his ink-stained hand pointing to the sky: "Listen!"

In the distance, the clock tower struck twelve times, startling all the white pigeons in the city.

The child's hoarse voice broke through the clamor: "The Japanese flags on Dongjiaomin Lane have been taken down! The Xizhimen gate tower is now filled with our red flags!"

He waved the newspaper and rushed into the crowd, his tattered cloth shoes stepping over the still-damp bloodstains on the bluestone slabs, the extra edition pages fluttering in the wind like a banner summoning souls.