My Husband and I Sleep in a Coffin Vol. 1, page 23
“So you still remember that I’m your shixiong? Then why didn’t you say a word to me after getting so badly injured?! Do you know how damn worried I’ve been about you?!”
“But I don’t want you to be in danger!”
“And I don’t want you to quietly die somewhere I don’t know about, so you might as well just let me go with you! If we’re going to die, then we can just die together and get it over with!”
Wen Fengjin and Wang Xiaomie stared at each other with faces flushed from anger.
After a long moment, Wen Fengjin’s gaze softened, filling to the brim with a gentleness that gave Wang Xiaomie butterflies. “I won’t let you die, Shixiong.”
“Mmhm…I know!”
It probably started somewhere then. They clasped that young bud of emotion carefully to their breasts. The increasingly obvious way in which Wen Fengjin looked at him after he came of age was enough to make even the dense Wang Xiaomie understand how his shidi felt about him.
And just when Wang Xiaomie was pacing to and fro with his tiny, newly unfurled feelings cupped in his hands, hesitating over what to do…that emperor unexpectedly sent his own shadow guard to pursue and capture them. The stronghold at the brothel was discovered.
What happened afterward was in fact just as Wen Fengjin previously described. They ran as frantically as if they were being chased by jackals, Wen Fengjin’s subordinates dying one after the other, until it was just the two of them left.
Every time they reached the end of their rope, the shadow guard would hold back, letting them escape with their lives. Perhaps that crass-minded emperor had ordered them to do so. By this point, no part of Wen Fengjin’s body remained untouched. Broken bones and internal injuries made it difficult for him to breathe and half the flesh of his arm had been carved away to expose ghastly white bones. Even if it ever grew back, this arm would never be the same again. The wound on his belly had burst open from the strain of carrying Wang Xiaomie on his back, and those scant few layers of cloth could not staunch the blood pouring out like a waterspout…
Wang Xiaomie was even worse off than that. Aside from its map function, the shitty system did nothing but beep death threats at him every day. But then he defended Wen Fengjin from a shadow guard’s hidden weapon, injuring his lungs and breaking both his legs in the process. The blow he took from that shadow guard destroyed his internal organs.
He wasn’t going to make it.
At this point, even the system shut its mouth. It’d probably given up on him a long time ago.
Only Wen Fengjin kept evading those shadow guards’ humiliating cat and mouse game, drenched in blood from head to toe as he carried him to the academy.
The ichor dripped from their bodies like rain, pattering across the stone steps as they climbed. The blinding sun burned them from above, air humid as the mountains brewed a real rainstorm. Wen Fengjin had long since reached his limit, and only the desire to save Wang Xiaomie was keeping him going.
With Wang Xiaomie on his back, the pair looked as miserable as walking corpses.
“…Shixiong, everything’s going to be okay… We’ve almost reached the academy. It’s fine if they don’t let me in, as long as they can save you… Don’t sleep, Shixiong…don’t sleep…Fengjin is begging you…”
When he didn’t hear a response, Wen Fengjin began to cry. Wen Fengjin, who’d wanted nothing but revenge, who’d never lowered his head, bent his back, or once admitted defeat despite the entire world wanting to oppress and torment and kill him, was now choking on tearful sobs. He said, “I’m begging you, please, don’t sleep, Shixiong…”
Salty tears flowed down his blood-stained face, washing a single clean line.
Wang Xiaomie wanted to pat his head, but found himself unable to, so he decided to crack a joke, to tell him not to cry, that he hadn’t shut his eyes. But blood poured out the moment he opened his mouth, staining Wen Fengjin’s shoulder.
“Shixiong?!”
“Nn…”
After a long pause, the only response he was able to make was a single nasal sound. But this one sound was enough to become the single source of Wen Fengjin’s strength. He climbed much faster than before, enduring the agony, as an ever-growing rain of blood wound up the long mountain stairway.
They were halfway up when the long-brewing mountain rain finally began to fall, about as welcome as frost upon snow or oil poured on flames. It was as if the heavens above truly didn’t want them to live. Wang Xiaomie half narrowed his eyes under the beating of ice-cold droplets, his vision already starting to fade. He really couldn’t take any more…
Wen Fengjin had to have noticed this. He wanted to take Wang Xiaomie off his back and hug him tight against his chest, but one of his arms was already whittled to the bone, the rainwater whitening what little flesh remained. He didn’t dare stop. Right now, he was moving entirely on willpower alone; if he stopped, it was possible that he’d never get up again.
The pervasive, bone-chilling mountain rain soaked through them as Wen Fengjin, lips pursed, finally arrived at the academy on the peak.
“Shixiong, we’re here! You’ll be saved, don’t be afraid, you’ll be saved in no time!”
Wen Fengjin agitatedly placed him on the ground as he spoke, then staggered up to pound his fists against the main gate.
Chapter 37:
The Sin of Avarice
IT WAS A YOUNG BOY who opened the gate. Upon seeing the pair, looking like storybook yaoguai who’d climbed out of the grave, he let out a scream of fright. Wen Fengjin grabbed him with one hand, splashing droplets of watery blood all over the boy’s body. “Call the academy’s doctor! My shixiong… Mian Deng-shixiong has been heavily injured…”
“Mian Deng-shixiong?!” The boy knew his academy’s da-shixiong, and as frightened as he was, still snuck a glance at Wang Xiaomie on the ground, finally recognizing his face beneath all the wet hair and dried blood. “Oh! It really is Mian Deng-shixiong! You guys wait here, I’ll go call someone right away!” He then ran inside in a flustered panic.
An exhausted Wen Fengjin sat down and leaned against the gate, using his one good arm to tug Wang Xiaomie into his bosom. The eaves of the entryway shielded them from the rain.
His fingers were ice-cold yet still moved gently as he brushed the long damp hair from Wang Xiaomie’s face, then enveloped his head in an embrace, softly pressing a cheek to his temples.
“Everything will be better soon. Just hold on a little longer. Those people hate me, but they should still be able to extend their aid to you…”
…But what about you? How are you going to evade the shadow guards hidden nearby and get back down the mountain with your body like this? You’re obviously planning to die on your own!
Wang Xiaomie struggled to grip Wen Fengjin’s clothes, but lacked even the strength to open his eyes or speak. Wen Fengjin hugged him and said, “As long as Shixiong lives on, I’m willing to do anything…”
No! Wang Xiaomie minutely shook his head, shameful tears dripping from his eyes as his senses began to fade. Finally, and weakly, he closed his eyes.
But they were both wrong.
Neither of them received any aid from the academy that day. The boy did indeed call someone, but that person was the academy director, who gazed impassively at Wen Fengjin and his once-beloved disciple.
“I said before, once you leave through this gate, you are no longer my disciple!”
The open gate closed once more. Wen Fengjin began pounding and banging on the door like a madman, his fists leaving bloody prints with each blow.
“Save him! He’s your shixiong, isn’t he?! Save him, I’m begging you…” Wen Fengjin’s pupils shrank as he stared at the nearly closed door. He fell hard to his knees… “Save him.”
That arrogant head pressed down upon the mud-soaked stone tiles, and the door stopped closing. The director slowly quirked his lips upward as the boy and disciples behind him gazed upon his back with some concern. “Xiansheng, Shixiong is…”
“Hmph.” The director raised a hand, turning around with a sneer. And the gate between them shut with a bang.
A freezing torrent of pouring rain, a body filled with pain and injury, a journey paved with humiliation, and a severed sliver of hope…
Wen Fengjin, head still lowered, dug his fingers into the stone path so hard that they left deep, bloody grooves. His face twisted into a manic smile. His odd black eyes filled with bloody veins.
Perhaps the last vestige of his humanity was thoroughly erased that day. What survived was a soul forced into distortion.
“I won’t forgive you…” Wen Fengjin hugged Wang Xiaomie, looking at the gates with tilted head, and raised his lips into a wide smile as he said, “I’ll never forgive you! Hehehehahaha! Even in death, I will never forget all the humiliation I suffered today—I’ll kill you all—all of you—every last one of you! I’ll have you buried together with my shixiong, with me—”
His despair was so deep it seemed ready to take physical form. The irises that filled most of his long, narrow eyes were now a bloody scarlet as they stared so angrily at the gates that tears burst from their corners.
He enunciated one word at a time: “If I survive, I will slaughter your entire sect! I will never show kindness to anyone else ever again, I will make the entire Northern Kingdom taste my pain! Aaaahh—”
Wang Xiaomie watched from above as Wen Fengjin threw back his head and roared. His lips moved for a moment, but to no avail, as something hot flowed ceaselessly from his eyes…
These were his memories. This was all cruel reality.
Those years were far too painful to bear. Even with each other to lean on, what little body heat they could share did nothing to defend them from all the people who opposed them, or from the cold unfriendliness of the world.
Back then, Wang Xiaomie—living alone after being abandoned and forgotten by everyone around him—traveled to the ancient past, where he met Wen Fengjin, who was equally tormented by the entire world. The two tragic souls kissed each other’s wounds and gave each other warmth, but ultimately succumbed as their paths to survival and hope were cut off one by one.
The memory he was witnessing jumped ahead to when he woke in a room suffused with a bitter aroma.
Somehow, they’d both survived.
According to Wen Fengjin, they should have died that day. But perhaps they weren’t fated to meet their ends just yet, for Wen Fengjin’s subordinates—Mu Yi, Mu Er, Mu San, and the rest—broke through the shadow guards with them, and used the best available medicine to keep them alive.
He and Wen Fengjin had both been wounded to their very cores, but Wen Fengjin had abundant internal energy and a strong body, so he ultimately made it through after a long period of unconsciousness. Wang Xiaomie, on the other hand, was just a substandard weakling. Not only did it take almost a month for him to wake from his coma, but he was still slowly dying, even if they were using powerful medicines to keep him going for now.
The day he woke, Wen Fengjin silently placed a hand against his cheek. In that moment, Wang Xiaomie felt that Wen Fengjin had changed. His neck, head, and fingers were all swathed in bandages as he smiled at Wang Xiaomie and said, “Shixiong, I’ll avenge you, okay…?”
Half a year later, Wen Fengjin carefully took Wang Xiaomie into his arms and once more carried him up the stone steps to the academy. But this time, they sat in a palanquin high above the masses and watched as the countless piteously wailing residents of the academy were killed by hanging.
That day, it was their turn to listen as the people of the academy mourned. The director, in particular, was treated to torture at Wen Fengjin’s own hands before finally breathing his last.
A trembling Wang Xiaomie covered his ears and shut his eyes, not daring to look at those faces as they approached their deaths, or to hear their cries of despair.
Wen Fengjin, however, laughed heartily as he gazed upon this hell on earth with full appreciation.
It was in this moment that Wang Xiaomie’s fear of Wen Fengjin was born.
He hated those people as well, but the majority of them were innocents. What wrongs had the ignorant children of the academy ever committed? He couldn’t accept it.
Wen Fengjin quickly noticed his aversion and fear. He was no longer the person who once treated him with such gentle softness, but radical, savage, unreasonable, and heartless, exacting revenge with unbridled fervor. Countless innocents lost their lives in the cross fire.
And Wen Fengjin—whose eyes were blinded by hate and the need for slaughter—was already incapable of being reasoned with. Due to Wang Xiaomie’s escape attempts and resistance, Wen Fengjin even had him imprisoned in his room.
Wang Xiaomie wouldn’t be able to live for much longer. He was taking medicine daily, and the effects of that medicine were growing briefer the more he took it. When the physician was at a loss for what to do, it was probably because he knew there was no way to keep him alive any longer.
Then Wen Fengjin did that to him…
As he watched this portion of his memory play out, Wang Xiaomie turned red from head to toe, covering his face as he cursed through gritted teeth, “Shameless!”
Now, it seemed he no longer cared all that much about such things. But with the pair already arguing, and more at odds than they’d ever been before, Wen Fengjin’s use of force served to thoroughly rupture their relationship.
He didn’t know what happened after that. Because not long after, he was lying in bed, waiting for death.
Wang Xiaomie was momentarily dazed. He’d remembered meeting Yan Chun before, though at the time, Yan Chun had looked nothing like he did now. Back then, he had been absolutely gorgeous, the kind of glamorous that had a fierceness to it. He’d looked arrogantly down at the bedridden Wang Xiaomie and said some nonsense words, then been taken away by Wen Fengjin. But it was also after his arrival that Wen Fengjin found the elixir of immortality.
This was probably a common failing of the dying. Lying in bed for so long with nothing else to do, a bored Wang Xiaomie began revisiting everything he and Wen Fengjin had gone through together.
To be honest, it was then that he stopped hating Wen Fengjin. He was already going to die, so why take things to heart? The most important thing was that the system had determined he’d failed his mission and was going to have him obliterated.
So when Wen Fengjin fed him the elixir, he used his mouth to pass it back to Wen Fengjin.
When the look of despair crossed Wen Fengjin’s face, Wang Xiaomie opened his mouth to explain. But the next instant, the system wiped his memories and ejected him from that world.
The scenery around him became a sea of darkness.
Floating in the air, Wang Xiaomie thought to himself, I’m guessing that after I died, Wen Fengjin believed I gave him the elixir as a form of revenge. Ai…
Stretching himself in midair, Wang Xiaomie shut his eyes and waited for his second death to happen. He’d already seen his life flash before his eyes, so it was probably about time to die.
After some time…Wang Xiaomie, still floating in the darkness, furrowed his brow.
Some more time passed. Wang Xiaomie couldn’t stop himself from scratching his head.
Yet more time passed…
Wang Xiaomie thought: Fuck! The reaper this time around is seriously bad at his job! I’ve been floating here practically half the day, why hasn’t he shown up to take me?! Do I not deserve a name anymore, just because I revived once and turned into a jiangshi?! I’m leaving a bad review!
Huh? Is it just me, or does something smell bitter? It’s kind of a familiar scent, too.
Wang Xiaomie’s consciousness faded away amidst this medicinal aroma.
“Tut-tut, that sure is some deep love you have,” Zhen Bei said, as he gazed at the man firmly pinned to the pining tree with sharp weapons pierced through both hands. His eyes, with the way they drooped at the corners, were the perfect definition of what they called “peach blossom eyes.” Even when he wore no particular expression at all, he still looked as if he were smiling warmly.
Around him, Lei-jie and Xiao-Luo were crumpled on the ground, the pools of blood beneath them making it difficult to guess if they were alive or dead. Meanwhile, there was nothing but a pile of tattered clothing in the spot where Yan Chun had been, along with a handful of something like white sand.
Wang Xiaomie was leaning against the side of the casket with his eyes shut tight and his lips coated in blood. His clothes had a bullet hole over the chest, through which you could see the broken skin and tissue reforming themselves.
“If that bitch hadn’t gotten in the way just now, both my bullets would have pierced his body—the force of that could’ve instantly shattered his head and liquified his chest. But I shouldn’t have expected any less from an undying monster. Even after losing so much blood to Yan Chun’s attacks, you were still able to injure me badly.”
Zhen Bei laughed as he spat out a blood clot that had risen from his chest cavity. One of his legs was broken, and the left side of his chest was caved in, but he was still alive, even managing to stand upright with his weapon for support.
The weapon in question was a strange one: Its body was a coppery-gold, its handle as long as a spear, and there was a palm-sized, horizontal copper cylinder on one end, making it look like a strangely proportioned, long-handled little hammer.
It was with this strange weapon that he’d returned to the mausoleum and, with that idiot Yan Chun’s assistance, heavily injured these two sickening monsters.
“I know… Hah… I know the weak point of monsters like you is the heart—but I’m shocked that you’d stubbornly ignore my attacks just to feed him your blood and Yan Chun’s heart. It’s a good thing you’re stupid, or else defeating you really would’ve been a challenge…” He swayed a couple times as he moved to balance on one leg, then used the long, thin weapon to poke at the chest of the man pinned to the pining tree. “Don’t you agree, Wen Fengjin…?”
