[Lu Family Courtyard] Feeling Pain Together

"We don't..." The male participant instinctively began to deny it.

He had barely gotten half the word "don't" out when the female participant beside him sharply jabbed him in the waist with her elbow, cutting him off.

The female participant seemed clever, keeping the rule against contradicting the master firmly in mind.

Ren Yi and Lu Zihan, however, wore somewhat strange expressions.

To elbow him while holding hands, the female participant should have raised the hand holding his, separated their arms, and then jabbed him with her elbow.

But the scene before them was completely different. She did raise their clasped hands, but their arms and elbows remained pressed tightly together, as though glued, without parting in the slightest.

The male participant's arm should have remained passive, yet for some reason it moved along with hers.

To complete the motion, his arm even twisted into an extremely awkward "L" shape, as if their forearms had been tied together.

As a result, the male participant was actually jabbed by both his own elbow and hers.

At that moment, the two participants also looked bewildered. They looked at each other's arms, still pressed tightly together, clearly unable to make sense of what had just happened.

Ren Yi thoughtfully raised his and Lu Zihan's clasped hands.

His attempt immediately drew a curious look from Lu Zihan.

The two eeries stood side by side, both looking at their own interlocked fingers.

Ren Yi tried to bend his thumb joint and lift his thumb while their hands were clasped, making a gesture like a thumbs-up.

But he failed. He felt a slight resistance in the joint, as though it were immersed in thick honey. Immediately afterward, a needle-sharp pain came from deep within his flesh.

He lowered his head for a closer look and only then noticed that the color of their skin was becoming the same in the spaces where their fingers pressed tightly together.

He endured the pain and pulled hard, barely managing to lift his thumb a little.

This time, he could see more clearly.

Fine strands of red granulation tissue had grown between their fingers, winding around and binding his and Lu Zihan's flesh together like plant roots.

Even the slightest movement brought a sharp pain, as if it were pulling at their flesh and sinews.

At some point, their clasped hands had actually begun to "grow" together.

Ren Yi could feel, however, that as long as he returned to his true eerie form, this strange distortion would immediately lose its effect, and his flesh would return to normal.

Is this an ability specifically aimed at creatures of flesh and blood? he wondered.

Meanwhile, the two participants opposite them had finally noticed the terrifying changes to their own bodies.

Unlike Ren Yi and Lu Zihan, they had spent longer in the Herb Garden, and the adhesion was much more severe.

Their hands and forearms had completely fused together. A web of granulation tissue could faintly be seen writhing beneath their skin, and a similar web had grown over their upper arms.

"Ah!"

The male participant let out a terrified scream and instinctively tried to pull his hand back, struggling to free their joined arms.

The female participant beside him also lost her composure completely. Her face was as white as paper, and she could no longer maintain her earlier calm.

"Don't move! It hurts..." she cried, but it was already too late.

The male participant was extremely strong. With his other, unattached hand, he gripped the female participant's shoulder and pulled back with all his might.

With a rip, the flesh joining their arms tore apart like paper.

Fortunately, he still remembered the rule to "act together" and did not pull their clasped hands apart.

But their flesh really had grown together. When he tore it apart, several drops of dark red blood ran down their arms from the severed strands of tissue and fell with a drip, drip into the soil beneath their feet.

The moment the blood hit the ground, the female participant's face went deathly pale.

"Run!" she shouted at the male participant.

The male participant started, scooped her up, and carried her on his back. He deliberately placed her against his clothing to keep their skin from coming into further contact.

Immediately afterward, the flesh of his body rapidly swelled as though inflated. Almost as soon as she finished speaking, he had grown more than half a head taller, and his arms had thickened several times over.

He was a physical-enhancement ability user.

Though he did not seem particularly bright, he had managed to survive until now by working with the female participant.

Without so much as looking at Ren Yi or Lu Zihan, the male participant made a great leap into the air with her on his back and rushed in the direction the sunlight was coming from.

Ren Yi tilted his head slightly and narrowed his eyes.

The fog was so thick that he could not tell whether they were near the Parasol Tree.

But his question was soon answered.

The embracing Vine Skeletons on the ground began to wriggle, instantly extending long, narrow limbs that shot toward the two people in the air like javelins.

The rule, "Do not let blood fall to the ground near the Parasol Tree," had been triggered.

Not only that, Ren Yi saw at least dozens of long, narrow shadows appear in the thick fog, weaving together from every direction into an inescapable net that closed over the two participants.

Ren Yi looked at the spectacular scene in the fog, somewhat stunned.

Isn't this... a bit excessive? It's as if it wants to whip them to pieces on the spot.

Until now, most of the eeries in the Instance had used their various abilities to kill. This was the first time he had seen one use its true form directly.

For some reason, this Parasol Tree eerie gave off a peculiar sense of "urgency."

Suddenly, a strange fluctuation reached him, and Ren Yi felt as though time had slowed at that moment.

Just as when he had first awakened perception, the hazy sunlight in the fog, the rough patterns on the vines, the panic on the participants' faces, and the bloodstains on their arms all became unusually clear in this slowed space.

Everything remained as it was, suspended in midair like insects encased in amber, resembling a collection of eerie exhibits.

It was as if something had "fallen" from a place extremely high and far away.

Ren Yi was likewise unable to move in this frozen space and time, and could only watch.

The expressions of the two participants faded—or more precisely, melted.

Their entire bodies, like wax figures being heated or paint poured into a river, turned into all manner of colors and "flowed" downward. Then they silently turned to foam and dissolved into the air.

Where they had been, there was a blank.

Yes, Ren Yi distinctly sensed the concept of "a blank" in three-dimensional space. That space was still there, sunlight still passed through it, and motes of dust still floated, but the place had become blank.

The very "existence" that had been there had been gouged out and had vanished. The matter that had once occupied that place, whether molecules, atoms, or any more fundamental components, along with its mass, volume, color... every concept associated with it had been completely and cleanly erased from this world.

Nothing remained.

In a daze, Ren Yi seemed to hear a faint lament from the world itself. Even from such a tiny wound, part of the chain of material circulation had, at that moment, unquestionably been annihilated.

Irretrievable and irreparable.

In the next instant, the frozen space and time abruptly resumed their flow.

The space before him was still normal space. Dozens of vines snapped shut like a swarm of snakes striking at prey, only to entwine and knot around one another, catching nothing.

Only then did Ren Yi realize what had happened.

Those two participants had "together" felt the same pain of their flesh being torn, and "together" felt the terror of being hunted by the same eerie.

They had [felt pain together].