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Xu Yuan’s consciousness vanished. It felt as though he had drifted into an endless void, swallowed by boundless darkness and cold. His five senses were gone. There was no sense of time passing. Who knew how long it lasted. Loneliness and despair seeped through him, filling every part of his being.
So… is this death? Xu Yuan felt that he probably was. With hypothermia and a fever, under the care of that human iceberg who possessed not a shred of common sense, there was no way he should have survived.
Strangely enough, no matter how much he had feared death while alive, when death actually arrived, what remained was only relief.
At this moment, Xu Yuan even felt that dying was not so bad. He could feel something warm flowing again and again across his lips. A little of it even entered his mouth. It was liquid… A little fishy, a little sweet, and surprisingly delicious.
Like cracked earth finally receiving rain after a long drought, the urge to swallow and suck it down overtook every instinct he had. As more and more of that warm, sweet metallic liquid went into him, currents of heat began spreading through his limbs and bones, driving away the cold.
Hmm? Wait. If I’m dead, then why am I still able to drink something?
The instant that strange thought appeared, the five senses he had lost slowly began returning. And in the end, he clearly heard the sound of gulp, gulp, gulp. He slowly opened his eyes. His pupils had not focused yet, so everything in front of him looked vaguely warped and blurry.
Along with that steady swallowing sound, the scene before Xu Yuan's unfocused eyes gradually sharpened. He saw those eyes, cool and quiet as ever.
His mind was still foggy, and for a moment Xu Yuan could not make sense of his situation. He stared at her for two seconds, then instinctively tilted his head a little. The moment he moved, a small icy hand pressed down on his head and held it firmly in place, not letting him budge. It was Ran Qingmo.
Xu Yuan opened his mouth, trying to speak, only then noticing that the spout of a waterskin was stuck between his lips. Warm liquid was steadily pouring through it and down his throat.
As his mind cleared, he slowly clenched his fist and began to struggle, but the other side was simply too strong. Being force-fed was not a pleasant experience to begin with. And this waterskin's spout was annoyingly long, with the liquid pouring endlessly into his throat through it.
Their eyes met.
Xu Yuan swallowed as hard as he could and blinked at her with all his strength.
Ran Qingmo blinked too. Then she nodded at him.
Xu Yuan’s eyes went wide. For more than ten seconds, silence filled the cave. His face slowly flushed red, and the sound of liquid being poured down his throat became the only noise in the world.
At that moment, Xu Yuan finally understood why the girls he used to date in his previous life would smack his thigh so hard. When the last of the liquid was gone, Ran Qingmo put away the waterskin, stood up, and quietly walked off.
The moment she left, the restraint vanished.
The suffocating feeling made Xu Yuan gasp for air like a man reborn. He slowly sat up, intending to curse her out on the spot, but before the words could leave his mouth, he froze in surprise and looked down at his own body.
After being force-fed that strange liquid, his body, which had been cold to the bone, was gradually warming up. The heat spread absurdly fast, visibly radiating outward from his stomach into every limb and organ, dispersing the chill that had built up inside him bit by bit.
It was a brand-new experience. Compared to the medicine from his previous life, this stuff was more than a hundred times faster.
"You… what exactly did you feed me?"
His voice was still hoarse, but no longer as weak as before. As he spoke, Xu Yuan looked toward Ran Qingmo's back, only to suddenly realize that the cave had become much warmer. A faint mist had even begun to gather in the air.
The moment that thought arose, his eyes swept forward, and what he saw nearly made him pass out on the spot. Ever since transmigrating, every time Xu Yuan opened his eyes, reality seemed determined to test the upper limits of both his nerves and his sanity.
The cave entrance was an oval opening about two meters across. And yet this perfectly ordinary cave mouth was now almost completely blocked by an enormous head. It was that of a giant serpent.
Two fangs jutted from its mouth. Its narrow snake eyes were half-lidded as it stared coldly into the cave. Its scales were a blazing crimson, like sheets of fire, and a single horn on its head gave off a faint golden glow. On either side of its skull, huge fleshy wings twitched lightly with each breath.
Rainwater poured over the serpent's body, or rather, this snake demon's body, and the heat radiating from its scales instantly turned it into curling steam.
Mist drifted through the air, and the cave looked almost like some immortal paradise.
What… is that? Xu Yuan struggled to his feet and slowly backed away. He had only just opened his eyes, and the first thing he saw was a giant python lying not far away, staring at him.
The common sense from his previous life still could not accept this.
Isn’t transmigration supposed to come with some kind of beginner zone? Is this thing blocking the entrance really something you’re meant to encounter in a beginner zone…?
Even as Xu Yuan's mind reeled, the corner of his eye caught sight of that figure in black already springing up onto the massive head of the snake demon.
Through the misty curtain of rain, by the faint light filtering through it, Xu Yuan followed the motion of Ran Qingmo. And behind the giant serpent's head, he also saw a massive ice spike, clear and pure as crystal.
It was a giant spike of ice that had pierced straight through the monster's vital point and nailed that enormous serpent to the ground outside the cave.
Ran Qingmo aimed the waterskin's spout at the sharp horn on top of the snake demon's head, then tapped its hard scales a couple of times with her scabbard.
The giant serpent closed its eyes as if resigned to its fate. Bit by bit, drops of golden liquid seeped from the base of the horn and flowed through the spout into the waterskin. Once the whole waterskin was filled, the aura coming off the snake demon weakened noticeably.
Ran Qingmo jumped down from its head and held the waterskin out to Xu Yuan.
Xu Yuan took it with a blank expression, mostly because his brain had not fully caught up yet.
After handing him the waterskin, Ran Qingmo looked around the cave, blinked a couple of times as if suddenly remembering something, then turned and ran back into the rain without a word.
Xu Yuan stared dumbly in the direction she had gone, his stiff thoughts slowly beginning to move again. Looking at the giant serpent blocking the cave entrance, he finally realized what had happened. To save him, this block of ice had gone out, beaten the thing half to death, and dragged it back here.
Rain pattered steadily down. The woman's figure vanished completely into the rainy curtain.
About a minute later, Ran Qingmo came back through the rain carrying a huge bundle of soaking wet firewood in her arms. Water dripped everywhere, splashing across the dry ground of the cave.
Ignoring Xu Yuan's astonished stare, she set the bundle down about two meters away from him and silently arranged it into the shape of a campfire. It looked very much as though she was planning to start a fire with wet wood.
Watching what she was doing, Xu Yuan smiled helplessly and instinctively prepared to stop her. But by then, Ran Qingmo had already flashed back to the serpent's head. Her eyes were calm and faintly luminous as she tapped it on the skull with her scabbard.
The giant serpent seemed to have been thoroughly beaten into submission. It gave Ran Qingmo a fearful glance, then opened its mouth and extended that long, narrow tongue.
In the next instant, a wave of scorching heat rose through the cave.
The pile of soaked firewood dried at a speed visible to the naked eye. Then the serpent's tongue lightly flicked across the wood.
A spark flared, and the steady glow of a flame flickered across the cave's cold stone walls.
Xu Yuan opened his mouth, then quietly swallowed back whatever he had been about to say.
