Starting as dockworkers, they swept through Chongqing.

Xilun did not close his eyes, nor did he lose his composure.

He just stared at the bed covered with a white sheet for a long time, so long that everything in front of him seemed to be covered by a thin layer of mist, and then slowly became clear again.

He remembered the black frost spear that pierced a man's shoulder and pinned him to the brick wall on the ruins of the clock tower during the stormy night; he remembered Lund, covered in blood, smiling at him and asking if he was afraid of dying.

He also recalled an earlier time, in a drafty old courtyard, when a man with a cigarette in his mouth corrected his gun-wielding angle, scolding him for being too murderous, too rigid in his footwork, and holding the gun as if he were about to fight to the death, but never teaching him how to live.

Now, all those sounds are gone.

Only the white cloth lay there quietly, like a farewell that had already been spoken.

"He brought you back," Daisy suddenly said, her voice even softer than before.

"Or rather, you two were both brought back. People outside have been surrounding you since last night, and no one dares to come in."

Savi had been on guard all night, but he couldn't hold on any longer, so I persuaded him to go rest next door. Rod came by once, but didn't dare force his way in; he left someone outside.

Xilun listened, but his eyes never left the white cloth.

"How long has it been?"

"From last night until now." Daisy paused. "Not too long, but not short either. If you hadn't woken up by now, those people outside would probably have thought you were already a corpse."

"That's what they think now too."

A lazy voice suddenly came from the corner.

Xilun then looked towards the window.

Lady Black Crow had been sitting there for some time now.

She was wearing a black dress, with her legs crossed, and her posture was as casual as if she were in her own living room.

Holding a cleanly peeled apple, she was taking a slow, deliberate bite, her overly white fingertips devoid of any color.

She seemed completely oblivious to the oppressive atmosphere in the room, her gaze sweeping over Xilun as if she were looking at an object that wasn't completely broken yet.

"But if you had woken up any later, I probably would have actually opened it and taken a look," she said.

As Xilun looked at her, images of that night's crimson rainstorm, the sky darkened by black crows, and his consciousness being completely ejected from his body flashed through his mind, causing his throat to involuntarily dry up again.

is her.

Not a dream.

It wasn't a hallucination during a near-death experience.

Lady Black Crow seemed to see the confirmation in his eyes, and the corner of her mouth curled up slightly, not so much as a smile, but more like a casual response.

"Don't look at me like that. The fact that you can open your eyes is not mainly thanks to me," she said, taking a bite of apple and speaking indistinctly.

"At most, I pulled you out of the mud and prevented you from collapsing on the spot. What has really dragged you down until now is the unclean stuff in your own belly."

Xilun's eyes flickered slightly.

Upon hearing this, Daisy frowned subconsciously but did not ask any further questions.

Yuri remained leaning against the wall, silent, as if he didn't care about anything else as long as Xiren could wake up.

Suddenly, a very faint sound of a copper bell came from outside, as if the people on the blockade line had taken another step forward to probe, and then quickly retreated.

Lady Black Crow tilted her head to listen for a moment, then chuckled softly.

"He may not be very brave, but he's quite quick with his legs."

Xilen took a slow breath. The air entering his lungs felt like a knife scraping against the frozen, cracked inner walls, causing him to furrow his brow slightly in pain.

He tried to sit up, but as soon as he exerted force with his shoulders and back, all the bones and muscles in his body seemed to groan in unbearable strain, almost causing him to fall back down.

Daisy immediately reached out and pressed him down.

"Don't move." Her tone was still cold, but her strength was steady. "In the state you are now, even turning over looks like you're fighting for a spot with a dead person."

Xilun gave a soft "hmm" and stopped trying to hold on.

He glanced at Yuri, who was also looking at him, his eyes reddening, his lips moving slightly, but in the end he said nothing, only slowly nodding.

The movement was small, but it seemed to be confirming something he had been worried about all night.

Xilun understood what he meant.

You are still alive.

That's it.

That's enough.

The room fell silent for a brief moment.

That silence wasn't peaceful; it was as if many words were stuck in their throats, and no one knew which one to say first.

In the end, it was Ms. Black Crow who broke the silence first.

She placed the half-eaten apple on the table, looked up, and seemed to have finally lost interest in the visit.

"Alright," she said. "Everyone, get out. He needs to rest."

Daisy glanced at her, clearly not entirely trusting this woman of unknown origin who exuded danger in every gesture, but she also knew that after last night, at least in this house, no one had the right to argue with her.

She stood up and straightened her skirt.

Before leaving, she glanced at Xilun one last time.

That look was complex, as if many emotions were suppressed in the eyes, but in the end it all turned into a plain and simple sentence.

"Now that you're awake, don't let yourself become like a corpse."

After saying that, she turned and walked towards the door.

Yuri followed in silence, but before leaving, he glanced back at Xilun and Lund, his Adam's apple bobbing and veins bulging, but he ultimately didn't say a word.

The door was gently closed.

The room suddenly felt much emptier.

There were only two beds, a corpse, a person who had just crawled back from the brink of death, and a mysterious woman sitting by the window eating an apple.

As Xilun listened to the footsteps fading away outside the door, he finally relaxed a little.

His nerves had been stretched for so long that even waking up felt like fighting a battle.

As soon as the person left, he almost instinctively wanted to lie back down, close his eyes, and even just sleep for a moment.

But just as he was about to relax his shoulders, Lady Black Crow spoke.

"Don't rest."

Xilun paused, looked up at her, and his voice was terribly hoarse.

"Didn't you say... I need to rest?"

Ms. Black Crow took the last bite of the apple, casually tossed the core aside, and spoke as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

"Just saying."

She raised her hand and pointed at him.

"Answer a few questions for me first."

As Xilun looked at her, a faint yet incredibly clear premonition suddenly rose in his heart.

He knew that the real trouble was just beginning.

There was no wind inside.

But Xilun felt that from the moment Ms. Black Crow said, "Answer me a few questions first," the temperature in the entire old house seemed to have dropped invisibly.

It wasn't the chill brought by the Xuan Yin breathing technique, nor was it the lingering death energy in the wound; rather, it was a chill from a higher, more shadowy place, a chill that one instinctively didn't want to touch.

Ms. Black Crow did not look outside the door again.

She leaned back in her chair, her slender white fingers tapping lightly on the armrest. Her gaze slowly swept over Xilun, as if inspecting a piece of merchandise that had just been pulled from a fire, its edges burned but still barely intact.

"First question," she said, "Were you previously possessed by the power of some kind of evil god's remnant?"

Xilun's brow twitched slightly.

The question came directly, without any prior explanation.

But he did not deny it.

He was silent for a moment, then looked down at his right arm, which was covered by a thin blanket, and a faint memory surfaced in his eyes.

He certainly remembered that black power.

Previously, in order to rescue his teacher, he ventured into the dock with the strange statue of a deity with severed limbs.

Later, a trace of black energy remained on his body.

Looking back now, that feeling was never normal.

Xilun nodded.

"Yes, I have."

Which place?

"The right arm, and later... not just the right arm."

Lady Black Crow nodded slightly, as if she had received the answer she wanted.

"really."

She reached out her hand.

Xilun instinctively tried to dodge, but he was a beat too slow, and the other person's fingertips were already on his wrist.

The touch was so cold it was almost inhuman, yet it wasn't stiff; instead, it felt like a thin feather landing on the skin, eerily light.

The next moment, Xiren clearly felt something beneath his skin being disturbed.

Like a long-dormant black line, or like tiny roots curled up in the crevices of bones, it slowly twisted along the flesh.

It's very light.

It's definitely not an illusion.

Xilun's gaze instantly darkened.

As if she had expected this, Lady Black Crow withdrew her fingers, lowered her eyes to look at the small patch of black marks that had faintly appeared and then slowly disappeared on his wrist bone, and spoke calmly.

"It hadn't moved much before because you had strong blood and energy, a tough life, and a strong body back then. There were also other forces suppressing it from the outside, so it didn't find a real opportunity to take root inside."

"But this time, when you're about to die, it's different."

"Your bones are broken, your lungs are half rotten, your blood and energy are as withered as wild grass in late autumn, and your spiritual core has been torn apart by divine power and pollution."

Your body was originally meant to be a house on the verge of collapse for it. But since you weren't completely dead, it took over and moved in.

She spoke of it casually, as if she were talking about something extremely ordinary.

But as Xilun listened, his back tightened little by little.

"Move in?"

"To be more precise, I'm completely stuck to you." Lady Black Crow glanced at him.

"The source of that thing probably belongs to some kind of evil god with an extremely strong physical body, specializing in recovery and regeneration through decay."

You survived not because of good luck, nor because of my mercy, but because it didn't want your body to rot away right now.

She raised her hand and made a very light gesture in the air, as if two unrelated lumps of mud were being pressed together forcefully.

"You almost died, and it almost lost its shell."

So it used all its remaining instincts to keep you alive until the very end. You're no longer just a parasite and host; you're in a symbiotic relationship.

Symbiosis.

These two words, like nails, slowly pierced into Xilun's mind.

He remained silent for a long time before speaking in a low voice.

"So I'm not dead yet."

"Yes," said Ms. Black Crow. "The reason you can still open your eyes, speak, and think now is not because you recovered so quickly, but because there is another entity in your life who is protecting you."

The chill in your bones, the lingering wounds of divine war in your blood, and that remnant of an evil god—these three things are barely maintaining a fragile balance. Without any one of them, you will collapse.

After listening, Xilun did not speak immediately.

He just looked down at his hands.

That hand was much paler than I remembered, with faint grayish-white marks resembling frostbite between the knuckles.

It still looks like a human hand, but only he knows that beneath the skin, something no longer purely belongs to the category of "human".

He had swallowed the power of the alien species into his body countless times in order to survive.

If you swallow too much, you'll eventually reach a critical point.

He just didn't expect that day to come so soon, and so ugly.

"Will it affect your mind?" he asked, looking up.

"Of course." Lady Black Crow replied as if she had heard something completely ordinary.

"The remains of the evil god have no complete will, but they have instincts."

It will like pain, wounds, decay, and you becoming less and less human.

The weaker you are, the easier it is for it to seep into your body; the more wavering you are, the easier it is for it to creep into your mind through the cracks.

As she spoke, her gaze casually swept across Xilun's forehead, as if she could already see the cracks.

"That's why you woke up so slowly this time. It wasn't just a simple coma; you were inside dealing with it for a while."

Xilun's eyes were calm, but a chilling clarity rose in his heart.

No wonder.

No wonder that when he struggled in the darkness, he always felt something damp, cold, and sticky breathing deeper inside, like a dead thing turning over underwater, like mold slowly growing under the sickbed, both stabilizing his life and gradually taking him back.

He had thought he had simply been pulled back from the brink of death.

Now it seems more like another kind of death had already swallowed it into its mouth.

Seeing that he understood, Lady Black Crow suddenly raised her hand and rubbed her temples.

"This is troublesome."

Her tone carried a rare hint of genuine frustration.

Xilun looked up at her.

Ms. Black Crow looked at her fingertips, as if recalculating an account that was once a sure thing but had now gone wrong.

"I originally came here because I was attracted to your physical body."

She spoke with extreme candor.

Xilun's eyelids twitched slightly.

Lady Black Crow, however, did not think there was anything worth embellishing about it.

"Your body is rare. You didn't come from a high social class, and your foundation isn't the best, yet you can continuously absorb external power, alien talents, materials beyond your level, and injuries, and you haven't completely turned yourself into a lump of rotten flesh."

What's even more interesting is that you possess a unique kind of 'fit'.

She extended her index finger and lightly touched Xilun's heart in the air.

"Including how you acquired your extraordinary talent."

Xilun's pupils contracted almost imperceptibly.

This was practically his biggest secret.

Even Rod, Yuri, and Lund only knew that he grew up quickly, had a strange physique, and could withstand far more than ordinary people, but they did not know what that almost unreasonable "ready-to-use" really meant.

But this woman in front of me, I could tell just by looking at her.

"Don't be nervous," said Ms. Black Crow calmly.

"Since I was able to use your body to fight last night, it's not surprising that I know more."

Originally, if you were still alive after the transaction, I planned to take your body intact.

Study it for a while, take it apart for a while, and then see how you've sewn yourself into this state all along.

She said this with an expression so calm it was almost serious.

It seemed as if this was a perfectly reasonable arrangement.

Xiren leaned against the headboard, listening to her talk about where she would go after death in such a calm tone. Surprisingly, he didn't feel much anger, but only a sense of absurdity and a touch of inexplicable weariness.

For someone who has died once, many things become much lighter.

This includes possessiveness towards one's own body.