Chapter 308
Chapter 308
-----------------------------------------------------------------
>Translator: Ryuma
>Chapter: 308
>Chapter Title: Icy Cold
>-----------------------------------------------------------------
The icy cold rotten orange slid into his mouth. Aside from the peculiar stench of spoiled fruit, there was also that distinct moldy flavor.
Li Huowang, starving to the brink of desperation, couldn’t care less about any of that. Right now, this orange was more precious to him than any rare delicacy.
After forcing down one rotten orange and feeling slightly better, Li Huowang abruptly sprang to his feet. Amid the pouring rain, he anxiously shouted all around him.
“Bai Patriarch! Don’t be afraid! I’m having an episode! I’m sick! I have an illness!”
A middle-aged man holding an umbrella spotted the disheveled and filthy Li Huowang. He hurriedly pulled his wife away, their faces etched with terror as they kept their distance.
Everyone else reacted the same way. The already sparse street, emptied further by the rain, cleared out completely in an instant.
Li Huowang paid no attention to these changes whatsoever. He knew the situation on the real side was extraordinarily urgent.
Over there, he was nothing more than meat laid out on the chopping block. He had to find some way to save his own life!
Yet the pouring rain continued all around, offering not the slightest feedback. This filled him with intense frustration.
According to the patterns from before, any disturbances on the real side should have warped into some kind of hallucination.
“Bai Patriarch! Where the hell are you all? Give me some kind of sign! I can’t see you right now!”
Just then, Li Huowang spotted a few men with umbrellas heading his way. His eyes lit up instantly.
With feet clad in tattered leather shoes splashing through muddy puddles, Li Huowang rushed toward them.
“Bai Patriarch!”
Li Huowang’s sudden leap from the downpour clearly startled the man.
“Bai Patriarch, you remember how I saved you all before! Are you really going to lay hands on your savior?”
Sensing it wasn’t forceful enough, Li Huowang added another line.
“And another thing! Bai Lingmiao is already pregnant with my child! Whether you admit it or not, I’m practically half a member of the Bai family now!”
“What kind of lunatic is this? Gave me a real scare.” The man with the black umbrella quickly backed away two steps, eyeing him warily as he tried to circle around from the side.
How could Li Huowang let him go? He stepped forward at once, spreading his arms to block the man’s path.
“Bai Patriarch, if you don’t believe me, have Second Lass tell you herself to your face!”
Seeing Li Huowang like this, the man replied helplessly.
“Bro, spare me, alright? Have some pity on a poor guy like me. I’ve still got to go work and pay off my mortgage.”
“What did you say? Sorry, Bai Patriarch, I’m trapped in a hallucination right now. Anything you say gets twisted into something else in my head.”
“Tell you what, Bai Patriarch. I’ll just stay right here and not go anywhere. Wait for me a bit. I’ll snap out of it soon.”
Though Li Huowang’s words made no sense to him, the mention of tagging along sent the man into a panic.
“Oh crap, a lunatic’s latched onto me!” Ignoring everything else, the man turned tail and bolted.
An anxious Li Huowang gave chase on foot. But after just a few steps, he stumbled and crashed to the ground.
The bodily sensations he’d ignored during their talk came rushing back.
“Cold.” Li Huowang’s lips had turned purple, his teeth chattering uncontrollably. He was so frozen he couldn’t even feel his fingers anymore.
Lying there in the rain, Li Huowang felt limp all over, utterly devoid of strength.
He tried to dismiss these false sensations, but his survival instincts forced him to struggle back up. Hunching his shoulders and hugging himself, he shuffled toward the nearest eaves.
“Get lost, you lunatic! Keep walking or I’ll beat you dead!”
“Hey! Don’t you dare track mud on my shop’s carpet!”
“Mom! Come quick! There’s a lunatic at our door!”
Accompanied by these shouts, the shivering Li Huowang stumbled onward.
Taking in his surroundings, his anxious heart eased slightly.
“Since I’m still alive right now, those words I made up must’ve worked.”
But no sooner had one crisis passed than another arose. His head was starting to feel foggy and heavy, likely from the prolonged drenching bringing on a fever.
“If I die in this hallucination... the real side should be fine, right?” Uncertainty laced Li Huowang’s feeble voice.
At that moment, he spotted a small culvert under a distant bridge amid the rain. It was cramped, but just big enough to shelter from the downpour.
Gritting his teeth, Li Huowang dashed over, brushing past a yellow school bus. A petite face pressed against the window, watching his retreating back.
Under the bridge, the clamor around him ceased in an instant. Li Huowang gasped for breath as he slid down against the wall.
No longer getting soaked, yet his body showed no improvement whatsoever.
“Why is it taking so long this time? Why haven’t I gone back yet?”
As Li Huowang endured the agonizing wait, he suddenly noticed something on the ground in the distance and crawled toward it.
In one corner of the culvert lay several plastic bottles with straws, accompanied by scraps of foil and a near-empty lighter.
Li Huowang reached out with his numb hand and picked up the transparent red lighter.
“Click~” “Click~” Shivering uncontrollably, Li Huowang struggled to flick it, but it refused to ignite.
As his head grew heavier and more dazed, a tiny red flame finally flickered to life.
“It’s lit.” Li Huowang’s eyes reflected the spark as he grinned, his smile as innocent as a child’s.
Glancing around, Li Huowang picked up a red plastic bottle with a straw and carefully held it over the flame.
The red-and-white straw caught fire and began creeping toward the bottle.
Once the bottles were ablaze, forming a small bonfire belching black smoke, Li Huowang cautiously extended his frozen hands toward it.
The plastic burned with a foul stench, but it was warm.
The flame’s heat seeped gradually from his palms, warming his body bit by bit. His trembling eased, and his blackened lips faded back to purple.
“Who’s there!” A sudden scalp-tingling sensation made Li Huowang whip around toward the culvert entrance. A little girl in small rain boots stood there holding an umbrella.
She was an adorably cute young girl, about seven or eight years old, with twin tails topped by a red cherry hair clip.
Her big eyes shifted from confusion and curiosity to pure fear upon seeing Li Huowang.
“La Yue Shiba?” The words slipped unbidden from Li Huowang’s lips as he eyed the girl.
This was the same little girl he’d hijacked back at the kindergarten.
Her backpack indicated she’d graduated from kindergarten and was now in first grade.
“No, she’s not La Yue Shiba anymore. She must be some projection from the real side. There’s no one else in the reed marshes—it has to be someone from the Bai family.”
After a moment’s thought, Li Huowang started toward her.
But the moment he moved, the girl bolted like a startled fawn, shrieking in panic.
When Li Huowang reached the entrance, he found a small piece of Dove chocolate she’d dropped on the ground.
He picked it up and popped it in his mouth. The chocolate was delicious, very sweet. That special creamy sweetness reminded him of Yang Na, and the Valentine’s chocolate she’d given him that day.
“Why was I abandoned on the street? Have my family given up on me?” A bitterness welled up in Li Huowang’s heart that even the chocolate couldn’t melt.
Li Huowang sniffed back the sour sting in his nose and turned back toward the fire.
He squatted down again, staring blankly into the flames as he murmured to himself.
“It’s all just a hallucination anyway. This is fine. This is fine...”
(End of chapter)