Chapter 27: Eight Years Ago
Half a minute later.
Watching the young Sentinel squatting down to rub the snow wolf’s belly, Xu Xunyue casually ruffled his short hair.
The Sentinel’s hand movements instantly slowed down, and he looked up at him, his face a little red.
Xu Xunyue couldn’t resist pinching his cheek again.
Warm and soft.
“Ahem,” Zhu Hui couldn’t help but make a sound. “Are you… are you going to look at my memory first? Or should I just tell you?”
“I’ll look first. Maybe I’ll know after I look.”
Xu Xunyue stroked his face. His palm moved slightly and touched two thin lips.
The touch was dry, not swollen. It was a familiar shape of lips.
“Okay. If you have any questions, just tell me, mmph…”
When he spoke, his lips opened and closed, inevitably brushing against the Guide’s fingertips. With a slight push of his fingertip, Xu Xunyue pressed on the edge of Zhu Hui’s lower lip.
Zhu Hui stopped talking, looking at him with a red face, his hand movements ceasing.
The surroundings became quiet.
The snow wolf, which had been comfortably enjoying its compensatory belly rub, felt that something was not right.
It opened its amber eyes, which were somewhat similar to the Sentinel’s, and glanced at the two humans, one standing and one squatting.
“…”
“???”
The snow wolf was shocked.
With the unbelievable feeling of being a third wheel, it opened its mouth, wanting to howl twice to break this detestable atmosphere, but then it felt that if it really did so, Zhu Hui would have to settle accounts with it later.
Damn it, damn it, damn it!
How can people be like this when they’re in love?
Oh, that’s right, they’re already married.
In the end, the snow wolf chose to be magnanimous and let out a couple of soft purrs, which was a kind of pathetic venting.
The soft whimper, to Xu Xunyue’s ears, had a bit of Zhu Hui’s pleading style.
So it was no wonder it was Zhu Hui’s spiritual body.
He looked at Zhu Hui and found that the other was still staring at him, looking as if he hadn’t noticed the snow wolf’s whimper. He knew that Zhu Hui must have accidentally fallen into the trap of being too focused—on his face, or perhaps his lips.
Xu Xunyue quickly kissed those amber eyes, then stood up and teased him in a tone as if he knew nothing:
“Why did your hand stop? Look at your wolf. It’s a little dissatisfied.”
Zhu Hui was stunned for a moment, blinked his eyes, and came back to his senses. He looked down at his spiritual body.
The snow wolf was staring at the sky with lifeless eyes, as if it had been hit by some image, looking completely dejected.
…So troublesome.
Zhu Hui sighed and very skillfully reached out to continue rubbing his spiritual body’s belly.
As the master of his spiritual body, he had a natural tacit understanding with the snow wolf. In addition to their many years of companionship, their bond was naturally deep. Zhu Hui had actually also developed a good technique.
From the moment he awakened as a Sentinel, in every training session, every battle, every injury, the snow wolf was his most loyal comrade. After a great deal of energy was consumed, he would often stroke its white fur and give it a relaxing massage.
Zhu Hui had always felt that it was enough for his spiritual body to be touched by him, and that no one in the world could touch it better than him.
Then, this view was greatly shaken on their first wedding night, when the snow wolf had privately run to Xu Xunyue to ask for a petting.
Although he admitted that his brother was very amazing… that was later. At that time, he hadn’t recognized his brother yet. Seeing his spiritual body, which had always only let him touch it and had never shown a good face to any other Guide or Sentinel, suddenly become so fawning, Zhu Hui was not only astonished and annoyed, but also a little heartbroken.
In front of him, it had always demanded things so righteously—head massages, back massages, belly rubs. But when it went to the Guide to ask for a head pat, why did it become so whiny?
Zhu Hui later reviewed it and felt that his feelings at that time were similar to what was described in the stories from the pre-Cataclysm era, the feeling of taking your dog for a walk and having it run off with someone else.
Hmph, a useless wolf.
This time, he was just returning the favor a little.
Of course, his brother was indeed very amazing.
As he was thinking, he looked up at Xu Xunyue again. He was originally going to plead for his brother to kiss him again, but he found that the other was already looking at the memory leaf, so he didn’t make a sound and just quietly rubbed the snow wolf’s belly.
…
The record of the memory leaf began in a residential area.
Although the houses in this residential area were low, they were clean and tidy. It was clear that the people living there were living a good life.
Perhaps a heavy snow had just ended. The streets were covered in white, and no one had come out to clear the roads yet. The colorful flags fluttering in the wind on a few flagpoles became the most vibrant color in the field of vision.
Not far away was a towering snow-capped mountain, with countless trees growing on it, but no green leaves, only bare trunks.
This was a residential area rooted at the foot of a mountain.
And that mountain—Xu Xunyue had some impression of it. It should be Fengshan, a place he had been to once eight years ago.
Fengshan was a high mountain that existed before the Poseidon Era. The scenery was very good, but the highest peak in the middle was extremely steep. Even beings with physiques exceeding ordinary people, like Sentinels and Guides, had to expend a great deal of effort to cross it.
After the Poseidon Era, the north side of the mountain became a cataclysm zone, and the remaining south side was separated by the peak, forming the Fengshan A1 and Fengshan A2 zones at that time.
At the foot of the mountain, these two Undeveloped Zones were connected, but on the mountain, they had set up outposts on the left and right sides of the highest peak, respectively. Zhu Hui’s father was a soldier at the Fengshan A2 outpost.
The perspective of the image turned out of a house, made several turns in the narrow and winding streets, and the scenery on both sides of the road quickly receded. The “tap-tap-tap” of shoes on the ice was very rhythmic.
After the last turn, with the main road in sight, the curtain of a grocery store on the side of the street was suddenly lifted, and an uncle in a felt hat came out, yawning.
“Isn’t this little Zhu?” he said in a local dialect, his tone the familiar one of a neighbor. “Taking food to your dad again? He must be the happiest Sentinel in the outpost today. If my boy was half as sensible and capable as you… By the way, the snow just stopped and the road is slippery. Why don’t I have my boy go up the mountain with you?”
“Thank you, but no need. I’ve been walking the road to the outpost for a year. I’ll definitely be fine.”
At this time, Zhu Hui’s voice hadn’t changed yet. It was still a clear, youthful voice, but he spoke with a certain maturity, a little more mature than his peers.
He didn’t stop because of the uncle’s greeting, but after slowing down to talk, he picked up his pace again and ran toward the snow-capped mountain.
The disaster of the era would push the young to grow up quickly. In the Empire of a hundred years ago, twelve was an age for peaceful study. In the Poseidon Era, many children in their early teens began to do adult things.
The outposts were built on the mountain, and the Sentinels inside needed to patrol the border day and night on a rotating basis, checking for any abnormalities. They rarely had time to go down the mountain. Without fresh ingredients and sufficient kitchen utensils, and with Sentinels’ five senses being sharp and not easily stimulated, their diet was naturally monotonous.
Twelve-year-old Zhu Hui had not yet awakened as a Sentinel. If he had started managing the house early, his cooking skills might have been even better than his twenty-year-old self.
Both of Fengshan’s outposts were built on the mountainside, slightly higher up. The road from the foot of the mountain to the mountainside was relatively easy to walk. As the sound of the wind caused by running continuously swept backward, the image soon arrived on the snow-capped mountain.
It was white everywhere—the mountain road, the rocks, and the bare tree trunks. There were basically no living things on the mountain except for the soldiers at the outpost, so it wouldn’t be like the residential area, where people would come out to clear the snow as soon as it stopped.
Such severe cold was not entirely a bad thing. The harsh living environment had caused many dangerous animals and plants to go extinct, and humans, who had evolved for hundreds of years, even ordinary people who had not awakened, could pass through the uninhabited areas of the non-cataclysm zones relatively safely with experience and preparation.
Note, it was passing through, not staying, and only limited to short-distance, uninhabited snowfields that could be traversed quickly.
According to Zhu Hui, he had been walking the road to the outpost for a year, so there really shouldn’t have been any problems.
But an accident happened.
The problem was not with the Zhu Hui of that year, but with the entire Fengshan of that year.
Xu Xunyue remembered some information about Fengshan from eight years ago—it was an unannounced overflow of cataclysmic factors. The boundary line had moved outward, and the entire half of the mountain under the jurisdiction of the A2 zone had been included.
The A1 zone was better off. The boundary had just expanded to the position of the outpost when it stopped. The Sentinels on patrol down the mountain had escaped and immediately requested support from the outside world.
The rescue arrived in a timely manner. Nearly a quarter of the soldiers who were trapped and lost near the new boundary survived, which was a very ideal result.
Eight years ago, the team Xu Xunyue led had participated in this operation. At that time, his team had just been formed, and the four teammates were all the earliest members. It was just that they later died one by one on the old land, without waiting for their own rescue.
Recalling this, the image in the memory leaf also underwent a huge change.
Zhu Hui should have already walked more than half the way. He could see the small black dot representing the A2 outpost in the distance, but at this moment, the previously white and peaceful snow-capped mountain became strange.
A thick black fog rushed in from the distance, like a dyed wave, enveloping the sky, trees, and snow. The small black dot representing the outpost also disappeared into the deeper black.
The image presented by the memory leaf directly froze, which meant that Zhu Hui had directly stopped in his tracks.
The next second, he turned around without looking back and ran down the mountain.
This was the correct choice, and twelve-year-old Zhu Hui’s reaction was also very fast.
Looking at the image in the leaf, Xu Xunyue inexplicably thought of the memory he had seen before, of the twenty-year-old Zhu Hui in the Diamond Sea.
They were somewhat similar.
It was just that the correct choice often didn’t necessarily lead to a good result.
Before he pretended to have an accident and returned to the Imperial Capital, Xu Xunyue himself had also made many such turns and sprints. When humans faced nature, faced an unknown and huge threat, surviving and living a little longer was the most important thing.
He remembered that when he was fourteen, he had gone to the Imperial Capital to study because he had awakened as a Guide, thus escaping the fate of his hometown becoming a cataclysm zone.
Like Zhu Hui, many relatives from his youth and comrades he had fought alongside had been helplessly left behind, and all they could do was continue to walk forward.
Twelve-year-old Zhu Hui’s reaction was very fast, but no matter how fast, it was not as fast as the expansion speed of the cataclysm zone boundary.
The black fog quickly caught up with him and swallowed him.
His vision went dark and then bright. In the blink of an eye, the scenery around Zhu Hui had changed again.
Before he was swallowed by the black fog, he couldn’t see anything in the black fog, as if there was an endless black vortex inside. But after he was included, the surroundings turned back to the original snow white.
White sky, white trees, white mountains.
The difference was that they all unabashedly revealed a thick malice. That uncomfortable feeling was still obvious even when viewed through the memory leaf.
Zhu Hui’s breathing became a little hurried. This was understandable. Faced with such a terrifying accident, the twelve-year-old’s mental state was not as stable as it was at the beginning.
But after adjusting his state, he chose to continue walking down the mountain—even though the “down” in his eyes might no longer be the original “down.”
Time passed minute by minute. In order to maintain his state, Zhu Hui ate the lunch he had brought up the mountain. But there were no lakes or wild fruits on the mountain. He was short of water, so he started to eat snow. After eating snow, his body temperature began to drop.
Even more unfortunately, he encountered a cataclysmic creature transformed from a snow rabbit.
It was a rabbit about the size of a small pig, and its combat power was on a completely different level from a normal wild rabbit in nature. Fortunately, Zhu Hui had brought a dagger up the mountain and had probably been trained before. After fighting for more than an hour, he finally killed the cataclysmic creature.
But he had also consumed a huge amount of physical strength, and his clothes were damaged, so their warmth was greatly reduced.
Later, because he had been staring at the snow for a long time, he began to show symptoms of snow blindness. Physiological tears flowed uncontrollably, and the image of the memory leaf became blurry.
No supplies, low combat power, injuries, lack of water, hypothermia…
A complete dead end.
In this situation, many people would choose to sit down and wait for death, or directly commit suicide, so that they could at least be a little more comfortable and at ease in their final moments.
This was a very normal thing. Not everyone could endure pain for a long time in despair. This kind of thing happened every day.
But Zhu Hui didn’t. He kept walking.
It was just that he walked slower and slower, until the image suddenly went black, followed by a heavy thud.
He had walked until the very last moment of his conscious state.
Perhaps this tenacity had awakened something deep in his memory. Xu Xunyue gradually remembered that he seemed to have saved a particularly stubborn child.
In his years in the Undeveloped Zones, he had saved many people, and this one had the strongest will to live.
At that time, all the rescue teams were heading straight for the A1 zone, and he and his teammates were no exception. After the most urgent situation had passed, only a few people went to the flat ground at the foot of the A2 zone cliff to wander around.
Because the situation in the A2 zone was too serious.
From the mountain peak to the foot of the mountain, a large area was occupied by cataclysmic factors. As far as the eye could see, there was only black fog. The outpost in the middle certainly couldn’t have been spared.
In a cataclysm zone, one would encounter not only cataclysmic creatures, but also contaminated and transformed kin, strange weather and magnetic fields that could appear at any time. A road that could be easily walked in an hour would take three times or even more time to get out of.
Everyone believed that without any preparation, the soldiers in the outpost could not possibly walk from the mountainside to the foot of the mountain and out of the cataclysm zone.
The twenty-year-old Xu Xunyue, who had just graduated from the Guide Academy, also thought so. At that time, he was not yet very sure about the special nature of his constitution. He only knew that his resistance to cataclysmic factors was particularly strong, and that cataclysmic factors had a much harder time surviving on him than on his comrades.
After completing the rescue, Xu Xunyue was planning to go down the mountain with his teammates when he suddenly felt a faint breath of life.
It flashed by, coming from the direction of the A2 zone.
He told his teammates about this, but they said they didn’t feel it.
At that time, Xu Xunyue considered two possibilities: either the breath was too faint, and only he, with the highest spiritual power, had felt it; or, it was his illusion.
These two possibilities were easy to think of, and most people would make a choice based on instinct and common sense the moment they thought of them.
So dangerous, how could anyone survive?
Even if there was someone, would they still be alive when you got there?
Even if they were still alive when you got there, could you guarantee you could bring them out safely?
…
Most importantly, could you find them alive?
Too many questions.
If it were someone else, perhaps they would have given up. But the twenty-year-old Xu Xunyue was a bit reckless.
Perhaps it was because he had just graduated from the Guide Academy at that time, and thought less and did more.
Or perhaps it was because of a moment of compassion, and the unwillingness he felt when facing death in the past.
The support for Fengshan was one of his first few operations after graduation. At that time, he didn’t even have a name for himself. But after a brief consideration, he decided to take a risk.
A risk, a word that was a bit distant for his twenty-eight-year-old self.
But that was what he had thought at the time.
In order not to burden his teammates, he only had them wait at the foot of the A2 zone mountain, and he set out with his equipment alone.
He didn’t even choose to go down the mountain in a regular way, and slowly walk up from the foot of the A2 zone to find someone. Instead, he carried his gun and crossed the highest peak, directly entering the place that had once been protected by the A2 outpost.
Not all correct choices could lead to good results.
But fortunately, that time, Zhu Hui had waited.
Flipping through a page from the distant and thick book of memory, Xu Xunyue finally confirmed at this moment that he had indeed been to the A2 zone.
Although it was by climbing over mountains, and he had only been there for a short while, he had left after saving the person.
He also recalled the appearance of the child he had saved.
Chapped and bleeding lips, a pale and scabbed face, and eyes that were cloudy from snow blindness, their color indistinguishable.
Like a feather, light to hold, but actually so resilient.
So that was the young Zhu Hui.
Regarding this, Xu Xunyue actually had an impression in his heart.
It was just that the past was too complicated, and some things that he considered routine, small matters of helping out, had been left in the corners of his memory to collect dust.
And the miserable appearance of the twelve-year-old Zhu Hui was so different from his spirited appearance at twenty.
The two impressions in his mind slowly overlapped at this moment. Xu Xunyue thought, he had indeed formed a bond with his Sentinel very early on.
…What a pleasant thing.
At this time, the image of the memory leaf had also been re-lit for a while.
The field of vision was slowly turning, first left, then up. The black collar appeared, and the heavily overexposed side profile also appeared.
Xu Xunyue saw the him of eight years ago.
Recorded in the small memory leaf, wearing a protective mask, blurry, with blue eyes and a high ponytail.
