Chapter 39: Bullied to Tears
The fear of the deep sea was innate.
The almost non-existent light, the heavy water pressure, and the rising and falling waves all constantly gave psychological hints.
Hinting that he could never escape, that there was no daylight under the water.
When he was suddenly brought back to his original position and once again bound by the shadows, the Sentinel finally discovered his predicament.
So from the very beginning, he had already been pulled into the other’s spiritual landscape.
And for a Sentinel to be pulled into a Guide’s spiritual landscape, and for the other to be a Guide like Xu Xunyue…
There was no chance. It was impossible to swim out.
“!!”
The water pressure suddenly increased. A feeling of suffocation rushed in. The liquid felt like it was about to pour in through his ears. Zhu Hui’s amber eyes widened, and he bit his lip hard to avoid choking on water due to his habitual breathing.
That’s right. This was what he should be feeling. This was the pressure he should be enduring.
In the real world, he had dived into the water. Although it was only a few meters, he had no diving equipment on him. His underwater movements relied entirely on his own physical strength and lung capacity.
His brother’s spiritual landscape was also a sea, and even a deep sea at that, darker and harder to hold his breath in.
He should have felt the water pressure, the fatigue and dizziness brought about by a long underwater dive without equipment, the excitement of his body and the lack of oxygen caused by not breathing… but in reality, he hadn’t felt any of these before.
In this state, his brother could connect with the sea. What’s more, in his brother’s spiritual world, his brother could do whatever he wanted.
His brother hadn’t let him feel these things before. Now his brother was angry, so they had all come back.
Zhu Hui barely managed to float on a newborn vortex. The feeling of not being able to step on solid ground always made him uneasy. His body was still there, but his soul had already been sucked into the vortex and chewed to pieces.
And that hand once again cupped his ear.
Xu Xunyue looked at Zhu Hui’s panting with cold eyes, holding the wet, trembling fluffy ear in his hand. Then he extended his spiritual feelers and continued to turn up the other’s sensitivity.
And so, along with a pitiful whimper, the fluffy tail that was not being held also began to tremble, and even limply tried to hook Xu Xunyue’s leg, as if it were trying to please him.
He looked like he couldn’t bear it.
Xu Xunyue looked at this flushed face, but there was not a trace of softness in his heart.
Who knew if he was just pretending again?
His property, of course, should be centered around him, with his will as its will, not paying attention to anything or anyone else but him, and always staying by his side.
Why should he leave?
If you make a mistake, you should be punished.
Since he had been caught running away, there was no way he would receive any good treatment.
He had to be strictly disciplined, completely defeated, so that he would have no extra energy to make trouble.
Xu Xunyue raised the index finger of his other hand and tapped the Sentinel’s constantly bobbing Adam’s apple. Amidst the other’s trembling, whether from sensitivity or fear, he slowly moved up, tracing his jawline, stroking his chin, and finally parting the tightly bitten lips, playing with the sharp canine teeth inside.
And he told him nonchalantly, “That was fifty times the sensitivity.”
Then, for the third time, he controlled the other’s nerve endings and turned up the sensitivity that had been fifty times even higher.
“Now it’s a hundred times,” he said.
Zhu Hui’s brain “buzzed” and completely stopped working.
He stared blankly, his lips parted by the other’s fingers, unable to resist swallowing the seawater that was pouring in.
The feeling of lack of oxygen became more and more obvious. His nasal cavity and his eyes became sore. The huge pressure difference caused him to go temporarily deaf.
His body was in a difficult situation, but the touch with a hundred times the sensitivity kept him excited. His ears were mercilessly kneaded, his hands were tied behind his back, and his mouth had no strength to close.
Even the gentle brush of the water current would make him make a sound uncontrollably.
So shameful.
Even though he didn’t want to, he was lost and completely powerless to resist.
What should I do?
It seemed there was no way.
At first, he hadn’t wanted to lay a hand on Xu Xunyue. But now that things had come to this, he had completely lost the ability to do so, and could only follow the other’s rhythm and wait for the end to come.
Waiting for all the pleasure, pain, and drowsiness that would befall him… and perhaps even death.
Will I die here?
I haven’t breathed in a long time.
His originally held breath had been forcibly interrupted. He couldn’t keep his body stable, and his oxygen consumption naturally skyrocketed.
His vision began to blur. Zhu Hui suddenly remembered the experience in the infirmary. Some parts of that experience were similar to now.
His sensitivity had also been adjusted, and he had also been touched by the other. Now, he was even more fully clothed, yet he had never felt so exposed.
At that time, his brother had punished him and helped him, soothed him and guided him, giving him a stimulation and care he had never experienced before. His brother had been lucid. He had complained about this lucidity, and his brother had responded.
But this time, there would be no response.
He was bound by the other’s spiritual body, which was many times stronger in the sea, unable to move. His body floated in the dark, sunless deep sea, with no foothold, only able to sway with the waves.
His sensitivity was turned up higher and higher. He could no longer speak, and couldn’t even make a sound. Not even a whimper or a sob. He couldn’t make any noise at all.
He no longer belonged to himself.
He could no longer tell where Xu Xunyue was touching.
Strictly speaking, Xu Xunyue wasn’t actually touching Zhu Hui at this time. He was touching his clothes.
He touched the gun and magazine strapped to his combat belt, pulled them out, and threw them away.
He touched the dagger fixed to his lower back, took it away with its sheath, and threw it away.
He touched the safety bracelet on his wrist, which had been assigned by the academy, took it off, and threw it away.
During this time, his fingers touched the clothes, and the clothes touched the skin. It was just such a simple touch, yet it had silenced the young man with a hundred times the sensitivity.
What Zhu Hui didn’t know was that in the real world, his gun, magazine, dagger, and safety bracelet… were also being stripped off at the same time.
However, these things in the real world were washed ashore by the waves. These things in the spiritual world were not cared for at all, scattered, and sank into the deeper sea.
After he had thrown away all the suspicious items on the human, Xu Xunyue paused his movements slightly and examined the layer of fabric on the other’s body.
It was soaked through by the seawater of the spiritual world, looking wrinkled and lifelessly clinging to that body.
Not very good-looking.
In Xu Xunyue’s aesthetics, this body was good-looking, but this set of clothes was not.
Its existence actually destroyed the pleasure the former gave him, as if an irrelevant foreign object was covering his creation, hiding its own beauty and superiority.
What’s more, this set of clothes was also damaged.
Zhu Hui had transformed into ears and a tail that did not exist before. For the tail to be exposed, there would naturally be a hole in the back of his uniform pants.
Might as well just get rid of it.
In the spiritual world, the entire set of uniform, top and bottom, instantly turned to ash. In the real world, the same set of uniform was carried to the shore by the seemingly sentient waves.
Xu Xunyue’s peripheral vision caught a glimpse of a few hard, paper-like things falling into the deep sea.
What was that?
It shouldn’t be important… right?
His somewhat sluggish emotions after waking up got stuck, reacting with uncertainty. Before Xu Xunyue could capture that indescribable feeling, he noticed something was wrong.
He saw… tears?
Crying in the sea was actually very difficult to be noticed, but Xu Xunyue was the master of this ocean. He could distinguish which drop of water did not belong to him.
So of course he noticed it at the first moment.
It wasn’t a single tear, but many drops, like a torrential rain, rolling out of his red-rimmed eyes, but without a single sound.
He cried beautifully.
But it wasn’t the kind of beautiful that made one want to be more excessive, to see if he would cry even more.
A thought suddenly popped into Xu Xunyue’s mind. He seemed to have seen the person in front of him cry before. At that time, the other’s crying had made him want to be a little more malicious.
But now, a sour feeling welled up in his heart.
He didn’t want to make this person cry anymore.
How could he make him stop crying?
Xu Xunyue once again gave him the ability to “maintain a normal state in deep water,” restoring Zhu Hui’s oxygen supply and the surrounding water pressure. He also loosened the shadows’ restraints and gradually adjusted the other’s sensitivity back to a normal state, without touching him during this time.
But he was still crying, as if he hadn’t come back to his senses at all. Because he had lost the restraints, his shoulders were even shaking from his crying.
Xu Xunyue was a little dazed.
He thought, I’ve already removed all the control I had over him.
He looked at the person who was now only wearing something on his wrist, and decided to look for clues in the details, but suddenly felt a wave of confusion.
He held one of Zhu Hui’s wrists and hooked the black hair tie on it with his fingertip.
This thing, it seems to be mine?
Why is it on my creation’s hand?
Although his sensitivity had returned to normal, such a touch still made the Sentinel, who hadn’t recovered, tremble a little.
The Sentinel sniffled, a little wanting to pull his wrist away, but the stimulation from just now made it impossible for him to use any strength, so he struggled weakly a few times and then gave up.
Then, as if he had discovered he could cry out loud, he went from silently shedding tears to biting his lip and sobbing, squeezing out a few incomplete words intermittently:
“This is mine, you gave it to me… you can’t throw it away.”
…Is that so?
Did he give it to him?
Xu Xunyue frowned, a blurry image flashing in his mind.
The young Sentinel, who had been pulled into the seawater by him, was kneeling in front of him, raising his hand to do something, with that black hair tie on his hand.
It seemed like something like that had really happened…
A sharp pain came, and the image quickly disappeared.
Strange.
Xu Xunyue frowned and looked at Zhu Hui. After a long moment, he very gently pulled the person into his arms.
“Don’t cry. Everything is here,” he stroked the other’s short, seawater-drenched hair, but he didn’t know why he was saying this.
It was as if he subconsciously knew that the Sentinel in his arms was crying because of this.
Right.
Why had he, in the real world, let the waves send those things up?
To some extent, the spiritual world and the real world were no different. Whatever happened in the spiritual world, happened in the real world. If it was destroyed in the spiritual world, why should it be kept in the real world?
He hadn’t thought about it specifically, but he had subconsciously commanded it so.
“Brother…”
The human in his arms was speaking again, in that wet and soft voice.
Perhaps, rather than words with a specific meaning, he was now more like he was murmuring.
But Xu Xunyue still answered. He said, “What is it?”
“I—”
Hearing this tone, Zhu Hui took back the words he was about to say.
Brother hasn’t remembered. Brother is still in that abnormal state.
If he had remembered, brother would definitely have coaxed him more gently than this.
Brother is still in that state, so I can’t speak carelessly.
Zhu Hui took a deep breath.
He had really thought he was going to be played to death just now.
Or that he wouldn’t be played to death, but that his brother would lose interest and destroy his spiritual landscape when he was on the verge of death and had no strength to fight back.
In that case, his body would fall in both the spiritual world and the real world at the same time, be embraced by the ocean, and become a part of it.
He had clearly been prepared in his heart long ago, and had thought that it didn’t matter if he jumped down and was killed by a sea monster, but he was still a little sad at that time.
Perhaps it was because he had already found his brother, but couldn’t change the current situation. He hadn’t been able to take his brother out like his brother had found him back then. He hadn’t been able to give them a good ending.
He had failed to save his brother. If he was killed by his brother, he would have no complaints.
But for some reason, seeing the pictures being swallowed by the waves, the tears just flowed out.
After that, the situation was reversed. His brother actually stopped and even coaxed him, though not very gently.
But…
His bonding heat had already been triggered, and because it had stopped halfway, it had not yet been resolved.
Since he couldn’t speak carelessly, couldn’t talk about leaving or other things, it was better to stabilize his brother first.
Zhu Hui raised his head slightly, his tear-blurred vision looking at the ocean master with the golden eyes.
“Brother… do you want to use me?”
