Chapter 28: Repaying with His Body
Xu Xunyue vaguely remembered that when he found Zhu Hui, he had actually already fallen into a coma.
…How had he woken him up?
Right, with blood.
Although he had water with him, it was already cold. He also had dry rations, but with the other’s chapped throat, he couldn’t eat that kind of thing at all.
Only blood was useful.
A little bit of nutrition, a searing heat, and the moisturizing feeling of liquid, all dripped from one person’s palm onto another’s lips.
The skin on the palm was thin, and rich in capillaries. After cutting it, the bleeding was fast and controllable, and it wasn’t easy to injure his own artery.
Xu Xunyue hadn’t thought much about it at the time, only feeling that it was a great bargain to be able to save a life so easily.
After the Poseidon Era, the Empire’s population had decreased sharply, and more than half of the youth had died young. If a young life with such a strong will could continue, perhaps he could grow up to be a key force in rescue and cleanup in the future.
Eight years passed in a flash.
The praise and expectations that had once flashed through his mind had come true. The person who hadn’t even reached his nose when he put him down had now grown to be almost as tall as him.
And he had become his Sentinel.
The kind whose eyes were very bright no matter how you bullied him.
The wind on the snowfield was calm and slightly cool. The memory leaf was still diligently displaying the scene within it.
In a cataclysm zone, Guides and Sentinels each had their own ways of survival. Sentinels had sharp five senses and a strong physique, and could forcibly break through in a crisis. Guides relied on the clever use of spiritual power to hide, interfere, and blur the cognitive level of hostile creatures, thus achieving the goal of safely completing the mission.
Compared to ordinary Guides, Offensive Guides had the ability to take the initiative to attack, and had more room for autonomous choice.
Xu Xunyue had directly crossed the highest peak to come to the A2 zone back then, but with an injured person, it was not good to go back the same way. Going up would increase the altitude, and during the movement, it was easy to bump the unconscious child in his arms.
He had never planned to go back the same way from the beginning, otherwise he wouldn’t have had his teammates wait at the foot of the A2 zone mountain. But during the process of going down the mountain, they had inevitably encountered cataclysmic creatures twice.
Xu Xunyue had directly opened fire. The injured person, who was obediently closing his eyes and hugging his neck, didn’t even react, and almost opened his eyes again in a stress response.
So, after the first battle, Xu Xunyue had torn off a circle of his black cuff and tied it behind the head of Zhu Hui, who couldn’t open his eyes due to severe snow blindness.
Now it was impossible to see.
On the other hand, Zhu Hui, as soon as his condition improved a little, began to talk to him. His voice and breathing were light, like a fluffy and fragile thing constantly scratching his chin.
“In those few dozen seconds just now, I was thinking you might as well just leave me behind, but then I was afraid that speaking would disturb you… You… is it appropriate for me to call you brother? You’re so amazing. I’m sorry, I’m a burden to you.”
So he had called him brother back then.
Xu Xunyue was a little surprised.
Perhaps it was because he had been so busy that year. Even if he had some admiration, all the people he had only met once would still be left in the depths of his memory, until they met again, until something similar was mentioned, and then it would suddenly rush to his mind, making one feel an endless sense of sudden realization.
So, how did the him of that time answer?
He definitely wouldn’t have said he was a burden, the twenty-eight-year-old Xu Xunyue thought.
“You’re not a burden.”
The twenty-year-old Xu Xunyue’s voice was calm.
“I came here to find you.”
The image suddenly went quiet.
For a few seconds, it was almost as if the pause button had been pressed.
But soon, the sound reappeared.
“Thank you…”
He paused, then asked:
“Then… the others, the others in the A2 zone…”
“I’m sorry.”
The image went quiet again.
But after a while, two voices sounded at the same time.
“Just as I thought.”
“My family is gone too.”
The image of the memory leaf instantly shook.
Although from the moment Zhu Hui’s eyes were covered, the leaf had always shown the color of black fabric, without any change, Xu Xunyue could still feel the panic and helplessness that made the image tremble in the blackness.
“S-Sorry, I didn’t mean to bring this up…”
“It’s okay.”
Xu Xunyue heard himself sigh with a smile.
“I’m just saying it out loud. What’s lost is lost, but we’re still alive. I’m living quite well now. I have teachers, friends, and comrades.”
“In the future, you will too.”
The other person seemed to sniffle.
Then the fluffy, scraping voice said softly:
“Brother, you’re the best, most amazing officer I’ve ever seen come to this Undeveloped Zone.”
Was my Sentinel so good at praising people when he was a child?
Hearing this made his heart soften a little. Probably no one would dislike a tough and cute child, or this kind of direct and sincere words.
The twenty-eight-year-old Xu Xunyue couldn’t help but curl his lips into a silent smile.
But in the memory leaf, the twenty-year-old him didn’t answer for a long time.
After a long time, he said with a little pride and a little embarrassment, “Yes… I know. But you should probably not talk so much for now. Your throat will get hoarse.”
Oh, the twenty-year-old me was a little cute too.
The road down the mountain seemed very long.
During this time, Zhu Hui’s eyes were covered with a black cloth, and he couldn’t see anything, so the memory leaf could only diligently play the sounds collected along the way.
The creaking of branches breaking, the rustling of falling snow, the strange and eerie cries of creatures.
It was unknown how much time had passed, but suddenly, Xu Xunyue heard the voices of his dead teammates.
A little unfamiliar, but more familiar.
“Captain!”
“Captain, you’re finally out! It’s been almost two days!”
“Hehehe, I told you the captain was still alive, right? See, the captain even brought someone out.”
“Captain, give him to me.”
Four different voices spoke at once. Hearing the last sentence, the owner of the memory leaf’s breathing hitched.
He looked very unwilling to be handed over to someone else to be held.
Xu Xunyue recognized that the last person to speak was the strongest Sentinel in his team at the time. Saying this, of course, was because he felt he needed a rest after two busy days.
But he definitely hadn’t agreed.
“It’s fine, just a kid. We just came down the mountain, we might be carrying cataclysmic factors. You guys hold the instruments and stay away from me.”
The four voices grumbled and moved away, but he suddenly remembered something.
“By the way, does anyone have any candy?”
“What do you need candy for?”
“I have some, I have some!”
“Captain, are you hypoglycemic?”
“Not me,” a piece of candy wrapped in paper was thrown over, followed by the soft sound of the candy wrapper being unwrapped. Xu Xunyue heard himself say, “He seems to be a little.”
The few brutish soldiers immediately laughed and heckled.
“Aiyo, Captain, so gentle?”
“Tsk tsk tsk, even unwrapping the candy wrapper himself.”
“No one in the Sentinel Academy would dare to dream of this treatment!”
“If this kid awakens as a Sentinel in the future, he’ll probably have to repay you with his body.”
“You guys just mess around. Don’t forget to come find me for a one-on-one fight when we get back,” the him of eight years ago was of course a little more lively than now, laughing and joking with his comrades, not holding back at all. “Don’t look down on him. He survived for a long time on the outskirts of the cataclysm zone after the boundary expanded. If it were you guys, you might not even have his willpower.”
As he spoke, he changed the subject and switched his conversation partner, the undissipated smile hidden in the tail of his words, slightly upturned.
“Here, open your mouth and eat the candy.”
After four or five seconds, the last sound came from the memory leaf.
It was a low “mm” first, then the words, which were not very clear, obviously spoken with something in his mouth.
He said, “Thank you, brother.”
Then, the image of the memory leaf lit up and returned to the scene it had first played.
This memory had ended.
However, before Xu Xunyue’s hand holding the leaf could naturally fall, the Sentinel who had been squatting and rubbing the snow wolf’s belly spoke.
Perhaps he had been secretly watching all along.
“That candy… I couldn’t bear to chew it at the time, so I just held it in my mouth, and in the end it just melted,” the Sentinel said. “Maybe it’s because of this, so I always feel that you are sweet.”
As a child alone on the snow-capped mountain, he had only felt fear and wanted to leave, his survival instinct overriding everything.
But when such a powerful and reliable adult picked him up and walked down the mountain step by step, he even wished that time could stop forever at that moment.
That feeling was too safe, and too nostalgic.
The Poseidon Era had no end in sight, and the pain also seemed to have no end. Going down the mountain meant facing life and everything. To live meant to face loss and death. But the warmth within reach was very real, so in many moments, he wished that his vision would be forever dark, that his eyes would be forever covered by his brother’s black cloth, and that he could stay in that embrace forever.
“Sweet?” Xu Xunyue’s voice interrupted his memories. He saw the Guide smile, a little surprised and a little amazed. “You mean, my pheromones are sweet? You’ve smelled my pheromones?”
Pheromones were a signal that a Guide or a Sentinel would only emit during a bonding heat.
But Xu Xunyue was very clear that Zhu Hui had not yet caused his bonding heat.
“I don’t know how to describe it… Maybe your pheromones would smell sweet to me too, but what I meant just now wasn’t pheromones,” Zhu Hui said. “I just feel that you are sweet, and your lips are also sweet. Maybe it’s a little faint, but you can taste the sweetness when you kiss.”
“You should be able to smell my pheromones in the future,” Xu Xunyue closed his hand around the memory leaf. “Even I don’t know what my pheromones smell like. Only you in this world will know—is this memory leaf also a gift for me?”
“Yes, all of them are for you. The ones I pluck are for you,” Zhu Hui thought for a moment, looked up at him, and added, “Will it be too much? If you think it’s too much and there’s no place to put them, then just leave them here.”
“No.”
Xu Xunyue stood there and looked at him for a while, then simply squatted down too and stroked the ears of the snow wolf that was lying limp on the ground.
The white ears with small black spots moved.
The two eyes, which had been drowsy from Zhu Hui’s rubbing, opened a slit.
He took a look.
Oh, it’s little Hui’s Guide.
Then I’ll just continue to sleep.
Before he fell asleep, the snow wolf hadn’t forgotten to turn over and show its back, which hadn’t been petted, to the two squatting humans.
It was clearly treating this mixed massage as compensation for being bullied by the shadows.
The two humans silently watched it turn over and fall into a dead sleep.
The snowfield was quiet, and the leaves on the distant mountain rustled continuously.
Zhu Hui suddenly said:
“I wish I had found you sooner.”
