Gu Mang stared blankly at the man before him. Hesitation and wariness, bewilderment and confusion passed through his blue eyes.
In the end, he still stepped forward. Very cautiously, tentatively, he raised a hand and touched Mo Xi’s neck.
Mo Xi immediately lifted his head and glared at him, his eyes reddened.
His breathing was somewhat ragged from his emotional agitation. His collar hung loosely open, and the lotus-shaped curse mark on his neck rose and fell with every breath, throbbing vividly over his artery. Though he had never undergone any demonic tempering, at that moment even his expression was no different from that of a beast.
“What are you doing?”
“But I…” Gu Mang stared at him in a daze. “But I… don’t know you…”
“……”
“Why do you have one too…?”
It was as though Mo Xi had suddenly been stabbed in a tender spot. His pride and resentment made him vicious.
“I never wanted to do something so stupid in the first place. You were the one who forced me into it.”
“……” Gu Mang looked up at this man whose reason had completely collapsed, bewildered and helpless.
“Hasn’t it always been you?” Mo Xi’s chest vibrated with the force of his breathing, and even the corners of his eyes had reddened. “You were the one who came to provoke me. You were the one who came looking for me…”
Across two worlds.
Across two different lives.
In both, you were the one who came smiling brightly to my side.
“You were the one who made me believe…”
Believe that there could be a friendship that asked for nothing in return, that someone could treat another person well without expecting anything back.
Believe that this fleeting world still held pure goodness, sincerity, and a heart so earnest it would remain true even unto death.
“In both worlds, you were the one who pulled me back—”
【!】Li Junlei suddenly began shrieking frantically. 【Critical incident!! Critical incident!!! You must not mention anything about the real world in front of characters in the book!!! This behavior will—】
“Shut up!!” Mo Xi had genuinely lost control.
He had suppressed himself for so long. He had been suppressing himself since university, and even more fiercely after joining the police force. Why should he continue to walk on eggshells now?
Besides, all his family in the real world were already gone. He was utterly alone. What did he have left to fear death for?
Hadn’t he come to this world precisely to ask Gu Mang for one honest answer?
Hadn’t he wanted to see what exactly Gu Mang had been keeping in his heart…?
Li Junlei’s voice rose to a pitch sharp enough to pierce his eardrums. 【Mo Xi, you cannot tell him these things! He believes he is a person of flesh and blood. You cannot tell him that this is actually a book! Absolutely not!】
The shrill sound waves made Mo Xi’s head ring, and waves of dizziness began to wash over his vision.
He looked at Gu Mang standing before him. Amid the dizziness, his field of vision gradually withered and blurred, becoming increasingly indistinct.
He seemed to see again the young man who had once stood on the deck of a ship. So far away, yet so close; so familiar, yet so strange. He stood against the sea wind, wearing a black trench coat, bandages wrapped around his waist, his police cap tilted askew.
“I really will shoot…”
Mo Xi seized him and pinned him against the wall.
“Yes… I know you will. Didn’t you already shoot me once…?”
【Emergency measures activating. Character fidelity has been reduced by 30%. If you do not stop this behavior immediately, another 30% will be deducted! Your freedom of movement will be completely restricted!!!】
But when someone has spent their whole life desperately suppressing themselves, how could anyone stop them once they finally lost control?
Besides, Mo Xi had never feared death.
What he had always wanted more than anything was simply for someone to turn back.
Just one answer.
“You made me believe… and then, in the end, you made me stop believing…”
“You said I had nothing to lose, so nothing mattered to me…” His voice softened, finally breaking into a sob. “But do you know what I lost after you chose that path?!”
Mo Xi abruptly turned his face away and lowered his head. After a long moment, he forced two words through his lips, each one shattered by hatred.
“Liar.”
“……”
“Traitor!”
“……”
“I wish I could—”
Suddenly, he lost the ability to speak.
Because Gu Mang had unexpectedly reached out and cupped his face, cautiously and hesitantly.
“You… shouldn’t be so sad.”
Mo Xi turned his head sharply and met those clear blue eyes, as pure as if they had been washed by seawater.
“I don’t know… I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“But could you… could you please not be so sad?” Gu Mang gazed at him blankly, struggling to form the words, each one clumsy and laborious. “…Don’t… be sad.”
It was like a sword blade, heated until it was about to melt, suddenly plunged into water.
Hissing clouds of steam rose, yet that frenzied heat was extinguished in an instant.
Li Junlei was still shrieking. 【Current character fidelity: 49%. Any further violation will result in another 30% deduction. Your speech and actions will be forcibly restricted! Your speech and actions will be forcibly restricted!】
Mo Xi closed his eyes. His Adam’s apple bobbed.
His blood slowly cooled, and his reason gradually returned.
Gu Mang looked at him and spoke slowly.
“You… aren’t a bad person…”
He said it cautiously. His eyelashes trembled before he continued.
“I don’t know you, but you… aren’t bad…”
“……”
“So don’t… be sad…”
Mo Xi felt an indescribable turmoil in his heart: hatred, agitation, anger, and something else he could not make sense of. He looked at Gu Mang’s familiar face and those unfamiliar blue eyes.
Once, this same person had looked at him with deep, dark eyes, smiling as he called his name again and again.
“Mo Xi.”
“It’s all right. Don’t be sad.”
“Come on. Let’s go home together.”
Li Junlei was still shouting. 【Severe warning—any further violation—】
A wave of exhaustion suddenly washed over Mo Xi. His eyelids drooped, and he seemed utterly weary, like a dying eagle that had exhausted the last of its strength.
“…I’m sorry.”
【You will cause this world to collapse!】
“I won’t anymore.”
Mo Xi’s voice remained low, burning, and damp with emotion.
He was someone who had come from outside the book. He had lived with such clear awareness that even after all this time, he still remembered his original reason for coming here: to uncover the secret Gu Mang had hidden within the story.
In truth, perhaps even now, he had never fully accepted the world of The Forbidden Book as a real world, nor its inhabitants as people of flesh and blood. He was not a romantic. To him, transmigrating into a book remained something absurd and laughable. Perhaps, deep down, he had never truly regarded characters like Yue Chenqing and Murong Lian as living people. That was why he did not care whether this world collapsed. That was why he had been willing to press Gu Mang for an answer at any cost.
But when Gu Mang had cautiously pleaded with him, asking him not to be sad, Mo Xi suddenly thought of something.
Many, many years ago, Gu Mang had sat beside a classroom window, head lowered as he wrote a book in his exercise notebook.
It had been such a terrible novel, yet Gu Mang had written it with such enthusiasm and such earnestness. When he brought it over to show Mo Xi, his eyes had practically glowed.
What about this one?
When Mo Xi had first arrived in this world, the wealthy returnee had told him that Gu Mang had once poured his heart and soul into writing this story.
During all those days and nights spent at his desk, had Gu Mang reacted to the characters in this book just as he had before—laughing and getting upset over them, perhaps even taking them so seriously that he talked to the fictional characters as though they could hear him?
The things that seemed so foolish and fake to Mo Xi—
Had all been real to Gu Mang.
“I won’t let this world collapse.”
Li Junlei fell silent. 【……】
“I’ll wait for him to remember me.”
After finishing these words in his heart, Mo Xi turned his head away, then looked at Gu Mang again.
“Whether you’ve truly forgotten everything or you’re pretending to have forgotten everything,” Mo Xi said as he straightened up. Slowly, he tidied his collar until not a single unnecessary crease remained, concealing the lotus-shaped mark on his neck. “I’ll wait.”
“I’ll wait for an answer. I’ll wait for you to tell me the truth.”
His eyes were still a little red, as was the tip of his nose.
Gu Mang stared at him blankly.
“You… will wait for me…?”
Perhaps because he had finally regained his composure, Mo Xi at last began to feel how humiliatingly exposed his emotions had been. He fell silent for a moment, then slowly gathered up the dignity and ruthlessness he usually wore like armor.
“Yes. I’ll wait for you.”
“No matter what happens, I’ll wait. No matter how long it takes, I’ll keep waiting.”
“But remember this: if you deceive me again, I will not let you stab me in the same place in my chest a third time. I’ll make you wish you were dead.”
The surroundings were very quiet.
Gu Mang lowered his head and thought for a moment before asking, puzzled, “What does it mean… to wish you were dead?”
That confused, innocent tone made Mo Xi lower his eyes and look at him coldly. Yet the redness and moisture lingering at the corners of his eyes softened the sharpness of his gaze.
Gu Mang noticed him looking and raised his head, too. He knew that this man had broken through his sword formation and disarmed him of his last “claws,” yet had neither bitten through his neck nor humiliated him as the others did.
So Gu Mang cautiously asked, “Then does wishing you were dead… mean… you’ll let me go?”
Mo Xi: “……No.”
“But you haven’t killed me, and you haven’t hit me.”
“……I don’t hit idiots.”
Gu Mang said nothing. He continued looking at him, then suddenly moved closer and sniffed him.
Mo Xi stopped him. “What are you doing?”
Gu Mang licked his dry lips and tilted his head, speaking softly.
“I’m memorizing you.”
“……”
What was he memorizing? His face? His scent?
Or was he simply remembering that Mo Xi was someone who did not hit idiots?
But Gu Mang offered no explanation. By now, he had let down his guard a little—or perhaps he had not meant to lower it at all. More than ten days of starvation had simply left him too weak and listless to keep resisting. Besides, his last remaining fangs were useless against this man anyway.
Gu Mang slowly lowered his head and curled back into his corner. His eyes, which glimmered like a wolf’s in the darkness, blinked wearily.
“Thank you,” he said. “You’re the only one willing to let me ‘wish I were dead.’”
The words struck Mo Xi unexpectedly, and for some reason, a sharp ache rose in his chest.
He stood there for a while, looking at the dilapidated little room, the small bed with its cotton stuffing poking through, and the tiny figure curled up in the corner.
“……”
Mo Xi closed his eyes, his long eyelashes trembling slightly.
In the end, he still went out and returned with some flatbread and hot soup. He fed them to the man who was nearly starving to death.
“Eat.”
“……” Gu Mang immediately leaned closer to sniff the food. After smelling it, he swallowed, but then hesitated.
“But you didn’t… sleep with me…”
The moment that word came out, Mo Xi’s dark brows shot up in fury. Without saying a word, he slapped the flatbread directly against Gu Mang’s face.
By the time he returned to his residence, it was already late at night.
“Master, you’re back—ah! What happened to you?”
“Nothing. Just help me get some rest.”
“But your complexion…”
That impulsive outburst today had caused his character fidelity to plunge below sixty percent. When Li Junlei’s punishment took effect, Mo Xi had already been barely able to hold himself together on the way home.
“Oh heavens, why has your fever suddenly become so severe?” Li Wei hurried forward to support him, thoroughly alarmed. He immediately shouted to the servants nearby, “Quick! Someone go to Shennong Terrace and fetch a physician! Hurry, hurry!”
Mo Xi vaguely heard the words “Shennong Terrace.” Thinking of the woman who had originally been designated as his wife in the book, he instinctively frowned and refused.
“No.”
But his voice was too weak. His throat felt as though it had been scorched by raging flames, and the words that came out were little more than wisps of smoke. No one heard him.
“What are you standing around for?! Hurry to Shennong Terrace and fetch a healing cultivator!”
His final impression was of Li Wei urgently shouting at the other servants.
Mo Xi’s vision darkened. He pitched forward—
And lost all sensation.