Future Me and You
The boy's injuries were quite serious. Yu Xing looked at his thin arms and legs, hesitated for a moment, and then bent down to pick him up.
It was quite heavy when you actually picked it up. After all, although this boy's build was different from Yu Fengchen's, he was still over 1.7 meters tall, and a man's bone structure determined his lower limit.
The altar was dimly lit. Amidst the conversations of other believers, Yu Xing followed the candles toward the other doors. Blood kept flowing down the boy's body, leaving red spots along his path.
Upon reaching the door, the nearest believer offered to open it for them. Yu Xing smiled and nodded in thanks before carrying the boy straight to the wooden barrels in the reception area.
The road was silent. Most believers were left far behind, with only a few who might have had their own things to do leaving immediately after successfully guiding their new companions.
In short, thanks to the lack of people, it didn't take long before they were the only two people left in sight.
"I said, why are you the one who came down?" Yu Xing glanced at the boy's hand, which was tightly gripping his sleeve, and had no doubt that the boy wanted to crush him like the sleeve.
"We have a plan." The boy opened his scarlet eyes and looked coldly at Yu Xing. "Where are you taking me?"
"You wouldn't understand even if I explained. Anyway, since you're down here, it's not like you can figure out this run-down village in a short time." Yu Xing raised an eyebrow indifferently. "Just know that the place we're going to later can heal your injuries."
"..." Upon hearing his answer, the boy fell silent and shut his mouth, seemingly uninterested in asking any further questions.
Yu Xing, however, couldn't help but frown as she looked at her sleeve, which was almost pulled down, and asked, "Why do you look so unhappy?"
The boy said calmly, "You wouldn't be happy if I carried you in a princess carry."
Yu Xing: "You still care about this? If I carry you on my back, your chest wound won't be able to withstand it."
The boy's gaze was calm, or rather, as still as stagnant water. It was hard to imagine that such a seemingly indifferent look could contain such petty calculations.
"..."
After two seconds of silence, the boy finally let go of Yu Xing's sleeve.
Yu Xing walked quite fast, and the reception area itself wasn't far. He quickly arrived at the wooden barrel, randomly found a room near the back, and put the boy directly into the barrel.
The water in the wooden bucket has the effect of healing wounds. To be precise, Yu Xing understands the principle better. The believer was dragged from the ground to the ground, and most of the wounds on his body were caused by the branches of the Ghost Tree. The wooden bucket is also under the control of the Ghost Tree's power. In fact, the water is to draw out the curse and negative power that the Ghost Tree has brought to the body.
"Ah, theoretically that's true, but if you insist on saying you have amnesia, they probably won't mind calling you a minor brat." Yu Xing grinned, with a kind of childlike joy.
"I thought only a bored person like Ning Feng would say such a thing." The player didn't care at all; his wounds were slowly healing under the water's treatment, and his condition was getting better and better.
His wet hair clung to the boy's head. He sat in the tub, hugging his knees, and after a while said, "Call me Xiao Jiang."
"Okay~ Xiao Jiang." Yu Xing leaned closer, smiling, and asked, "It's still the same question, why did you come down, and not Yu Fengchen? I had a whole bunch of plans I wanted to complete with him, it's such a pity he didn't come~"
Xiao Jiang glanced at him.
"They've arrived."
Yu Xing: "Hmm?"
"Yu Fengchen is here, but I don't know where he's hiding now." Having seemingly recovered his strength and energy, Xiao Jiang's initial weakness had vanished, and he was speaking fluently. "He said there are people who know him down there, so it's inconvenient for him to come down openly."
"So when he was being held back by the Ghost Tree, we used a little trick to secretly switch places. He followed behind me, who had been pulled down, and we found another opportunity to come over together."
When he said these words, he was like an emotionless robot, seemingly not caring at all about the danger involved.
"In other words, Yu Fengchen actually knew about this place all along, and was also familiar with the process of entering it." Yu Xing stroked his chin. "Strange... Ning Feng said at the art museum that it was your team's first time here too... Wait a minute."
He blinked. "Where did you come from?"
"Sea of Burial." Xiao Jiang said without changing his expression, uttering a place name that Yu Xing had never heard of before.
Yu Xing: "... Not Dead Silent Island?"
Xiao Jiang: "Dead Silent Island is the place we went to six months ago. However, we moved from the cave in the underwater ruins of the Sea of Burial to the Ghost Tree below Dead Silent Island."
"Oh, I see..." Yu Xing responded, her eyes flashing. She glanced at Xiao Jiang's calm face, imagined Yu Fengchen hiding in some corner, and suddenly had a realization.
"Let me guess... could it be that my future self told you this information, which is why you returned to this tree on Dead Silent Island in the future, and that's why you weren't surprised to find me here and had made plans in advance?"
The Absurd Deduction System and the Experience Master System that Yu Fengchen was in already had a serious time difference, with time and space completely chaotic in different worlds. Anyway, this wasn't the first time they had met through different timelines.
"That's right," Xiao Jiang readily admitted. "But we didn't meet at Sea of Burial; you had that lunatic on your team tell us."
"A mentally ill person?" Yu Xing laughed out of surprise. "You actually described Yi Qing like that."
However, Xiao Jiang gave him a look that barely revealed a hint of complexity.
"It's not the Sheqing Ghost, it's that..."
"Zhao Yijiu."1
Yu Xing's smile suddenly froze.
Chapter Twenty-Seven: Me and You in the Future