Chapter 701: Chapter 600: The Heartbreaker
Baili An had often wondered why Ning Feiyan could always laugh off the pain, death, and torment imposed on her by others and perfectly conceal all her emotions.
Now, as he watched her before him, Baili An finally understood.
Perhaps it was because, from the very beginning, she had been abandoned by her kin into the Abyss, unaware of what light was, so she never felt pain.
Baili An couldn’t imagine how that empty girl, with her frail hands, had slowly built a copper wall and iron barrier.
And how she alone had defended a cold, empty castle as vast as her loneliness, protecting herself like a hedgehog without letting anything slip through.
Yet, a woman back then had merely used a broken piece of bread to show that the seemingly impregnable walls were not so indestructible after all.
Ultimately, she still longed for someone outside those walls to extend a warm hand to her.
Gently tapping on the wall, thick dust would loosen and fall from the sturdy bricks.
Perhaps because that fleeting warmth was too beautiful, it allowed an easy hand to create a narrow crack in her meticulously built walls over the years.
Beneath her feet was darkness, and through the crack shone a beam of light.
Those trapped at the bottom of the well, upon seeing the light, would inevitably feel a burst of impulse, their hearts longing for brilliance.
Following this faint light, hands covered in dust and mottled with blood, with a hint of anticipation, slowly excavated her own walls, digging until they were bloody and painfully unbearable.
Finally, when she decided to abandon the cold lonely castle that could protect her, she climbed out of the gap, bloodied and stumbling.
But she discovered that the winds outside the walls were strong, scattering what little warmth remained.
Hundreds of thousands of miles of mountains and rivers with no one waiting outside her city walls, the sparks of humanity also bore no trace of belonging to her.
At that moment, she thoroughly understood that those who live on hope would eventually starve to death.
Locking her heart away, she returned to the solitary city, and she had no choice but to restore the section of the wall she had dug open to its original state.
In the end, a weary bird returns to the forest, resigning itself to fate.
As seasons turned to winter, when someone knocked on the city walls again, a thick layer of ice had already formed on all sides of the wall, and no more crumbling mortar fell.
Naturally, she wouldn’t allow even a sliver of light into her world again.
After all, who actually enjoys being alone? It’s just the fear of disappointment.
For Ning Feiyan, warmth was indeed beautiful.
But beautiful things are always fleeting, just like the corner of torn bread her mother once gave her, which was also the only moment she ever caught the scent of her mother.
But her mother was so stingy, giving her only a little, and yet she had remembered it for so many years.
With Baili An, she had felt warmth not unlike what her mother had brought her that night, more than once.
That time when she faced off against Yihe Shu Ci’s death threats, and Mi Lu, who kept saying he would marry her, backed off, Baili An stepped forward at that moment, and Ning Feiyan’s heart was not unmoved.
It’s just that after suffering bitterly for so long, she became increasingly indifferent, feeling anxious and fearful about receiving anything.
A person who cannot offer even a sliver of warmth to others, on what grounds does she feel entitled to accept kindness from others?
These seemingly beautiful yet actually illusory things, in Ning Feiyan’s eyes, were far less real than the exchange of gains and losses.
Baili An saw her gaze gradually turn colder, and he met her eye unflinchingly, stating calmly, “I’ve known for a long time.”
Ning Feiyan’s brow was furrowed deeply, cooling down from her previously fiery passion; she asked, “In Xianling City?”
Seeing her adamant curiosity, Baili An sighed helplessly and answered honestly, “The day I turned into a cat and you offered me to the Demon Lord, when I was sunburned and you fed me your blood.”
Ning Feiyan’s frown deepened, seeming puzzled.
Baili An explained patiently, “If I’m conscious while in contact with fresh blood, I can identify whose blood it is.”
Ning Feiyan found this statement absurd, a sense of anger stirred by being toyed with emerging, “Ridiculous, I wasn’t injured the night I infiltrated the palace in Xianling City, so how could you know it was me.”
She felt he was spouting lies, deceiving her—Ning Feiyan even suspected that he hadn’t been drunk that night and had been awake the entire time.
“Why are you so foolish?”
Baili An’s ears tinted red as he pressed closer to her, saying, “Who said you weren’t hurt that night? Normally you’re so careful, how could you be so careless about this? There was blood on the couch, and you didn’t even know to clean it up. I couldn’t tell whose it was then, but it definitely wasn’t Su Jing’s.”
Ning Feiyan’s face, cold as frost, flushed as well but she stubbornly tried to defend her dignity as an Enchanting Demon.
She snorted with great disdain, “Ridiculous, I am the most beautiful Enchanting Demon born in Beiyuan Forest, I’ve been with countless men, not just a thousand but at least eight hundred, what pure body do I have left to cheapen you? That was just a wound from fighting Su Jing when I went to trouble her.”
So she hadn’t been injured in Xianling City, but now she had gotten hurt in a fight with someone else?
Her words didn’t align; it seemed her cleverness had run out. This cunning cat seldom gets flustered, but when he does, his mind turns foolish.