The Affliction

A few seconds later, Ran Qingmo came plummeting down from the sky, holding a huge white tiger by the scruff. It slammed hard into the ground.

The white tiger's enormous body, a full twenty feet long, looked like an oversized house cat in Ran Qingmo's hands. She held it down by the scruff, pinning it to the ground so it couldn't move.

Ran Qingmo let go and pointed at the tiger lying on the ground. Then she walked over to Xu Yuan and asked softly,

"Will this do?"

Xu Yuan didn't answer.

After Ran Qingmo let go, he saw the huge tiger quietly lift its head, its vertical pupils fixed on Ran Qingmo's back with a sinister stare.

The next moment,

the great white tiger tried to demonstrate to Ran Qingmo what it meant to prefer death to a life without freedom.

The white tiger lunged at the woman's slender figure with all its might, only for Ran Qingmo to turn and smash the scabbard of her sword against its skull.

For an instant,

Xu Yuan thought he saw the white tiger's dazed eyes as it flew through the air, looking as though it were about to ascend to heaven.

"Boom!"

The tiger's massive body became a blur as it flew backward, crashing into the roots of a towering tree a hundred feet tall, dozens of feet away.

Ran Qingmo stopped on her way to Xu Yuan and glanced back at the tiger. A trace of disappointment crossed her face as she murmured,

"Looks like it still won't do."

"Wait a moment," she said quietly to Xu Yuan. Then, holding her sword, she headed toward the rising cloud of dust.

After a brief silence, a white blur shot out of the dust. It didn't charge at Ran Qingmo again. Instead, it scrambled away on all fours, trying to flee into the depths of the distant forest.

A human woman—terrifying! It had to get away.

Ran Qingmo stamped her foot, and her figure vanished.

"Thud!"

A dull thump split the forest's silence, startling a flock of birds into flight.

Ran Qingmo landed steadily and glanced at the great tiger, its head buried in the dirt and its body motionless. Without a word, she grabbed the fur on its head and dragged it toward Xu Yuan.

Xu Yuan watched the whole scene, the corner of his eye twitching.

Coming to a stop, Ran Qingmo nodded at him.

"It should work now. Give it a try."

Xu Yuan opened his mouth, then glanced at the white tiger lying motionless on the ground.

The tiger's eyes were half shut. It was obviously pretending to be dead, and it fixed Xu Yuan with a warning stare.

All demon beasts possessed some degree of intelligence, and by now the great white tiger understood that this terrifying human woman wanted to give it to the man before her as a mount.

Xu Yuan hesitated briefly, but trusting in Ran Qingmo's strength, he still walked toward the tiger, one step at a time.

As soon as he got close,

the white tiger opened its half-lidded eyes and stared at Xu Yuan. It raised its head slightly and let out a warning growl:

"Roar!"

A true man would rather die than be humiliated.

"Thwack!"

The woman standing beside them heard the sound and immediately smacked it with her scabbard.

"Yow!" The white tiger promptly lowered its head.

Xu Yuan grabbed the tiger's fur and climbed onto its back.

The tiger's fur was smooth and soft. It felt lovely to the touch, like petting a cat in his previous life.

Xu Yuan tried stroking the tiger's head a couple of times, only to find several swollen lumps.

"Roar!" The tiger bared its teeth and growled.

"Thwack!" Another lump appeared.

"Whimper." The tiger obediently lowered its head to the ground.

Ran Qingmo slowly lowered her scabbard and said softly,

"Let's go."

As she spoke, she glanced at the white tiger from the corner of her eye.

At a glance from Ran Qingmo, the great white tiger beneath Xu Yuan began to tremble. It didn't immediately get up, but first rubbed its head against the hem of Ran Qingmo's black robe.

Xu Yuan found the sight amusing. The corner of his mouth had just started to lift when a tightness in his chest, mixed with a faint itch, suddenly spread through him.

"..."

His smile vanished, and Xu Yuan frowned.

He'd experienced this itching sensation several times over the past two days.

It was probably an addiction caused by the original Xu Changtian's "drug use." If he could endure it for a quarter of an hour, the feeling would fade on its own.

The thought had barely crossed his mind when Xu Yuan prepared to ask them to delay their departure. But before he could speak, the itch inside his chest suddenly seemed to mutate, spreading wildly and turning within seconds into a maddening "craving."

A powerful sensation of suffocation instantly plunged Xu Yuan's vision into darkness.

Xu Yuan instinctively clenched the white tiger's soft fur to steady himself, but wave after wave of dizziness surged through him. His once-straight back gradually bent, and the hand gripping the fur slowly went limp. His body tipped uncontrollably to the side.

Ran Qingmo noticed something was wrong at once. With a single step, she appeared beside Xu Yuan and caught him before he fell. Her brows knitted slightly.

"What's wrong?"

Xu Yuan's vision went dark. He opened his mouth to speak, but a metallic sweetness surged up from his throat.

"Wha—"

A great mouthful of blood splattered onto the brown earth. The pain made Xu Yuan instinctively push away Ran Qingmo, who was supporting him, and drop to one knee.

His consciousness blurred. Between the pain and the suffocating craving, Xu Yuan dug his fingers deep into the soil.

There was something wrong with this body.

This agony, as though it came from the depths of his soul, couldn't possibly have been caused by taking drugs.

Xu Yuan rapidly searched his memories for anything related to the original Xu Changtian. But no matter how thoroughly he racked his brain, he couldn't come up with a single clue.

Neither the sourcebook, the game's story, nor the related novels mentioned the original having symptoms like this, much less explained their cause.

Was it... the world filling in the gaps on its own?

A thought flashed through Xu Yuan's mind.

Even though Cangyuan had millions of words of text, that was still far too little to describe an entire world. The blank spaces left by what hadn't been written would naturally be filled in by the world itself.

But why would the world fill in those gaps by giving the original body these symptoms?!

Xu Yuan tried to find clues and work out what was happening, but his consciousness was already growing hazy. His eyelids felt so heavy that he shut them in agony.

He didn't know how long passed before he woke again. The stars had shifted, and the sun had vanished.

Through the gaps between his fingers, Xu Yuan could just make out the full moon beyond the canopy and the stars scattered across the sky. He stared blankly at the night sky for a long time as the memories from before he passed out came flooding back.

Frowning, Xu Yuan immediately sat up and touched his chest, still shaken. The source of the pain that had been lodged there earlier had disappeared.

"You're awake?"

The woman's cool voice caught Xu Yuan's attention. He turned to look and immediately saw the black-clad woman sitting beside a tree, eyes closed as she rested in that familiar pose.

Xu Yuan looked around.

The surroundings had changed beyond recognition since he'd passed out. The towering trees, like the ones in Pandora's forest from Avatar, were gone. In their place was a barren, snow-covered mountain range.

It seemed Ran Qingmo had carried him a long way while he was unconscious.

Xu Yuan rubbed his brow and asked softly, "How long was I out?"

"Four days," Ran Qingmo replied.

Xu Yuan looked surprised. "I was out that long?"

After a pause, he reined in his surprise. Remembering the symptoms he'd suffered before passing out, a shadow crossed his eyes.

Now that he was awake, he remembered the terrifying pain deep in his bones and the suffocating feeling. He was even more certain that drugs couldn't have caused something like that.

Given the original body's father's temperament, anyone who gave him a drug that dangerous would have had their entire clan wiped out.

Could it be his constitution?

As a Chinese-style xianxia game, Cangyuan had a few constitutions that made people born winners, like Sword Embryo Spirit Body and Dao Soul Divine Bones. But no matter how he thought it over, none matched his symptoms.

Xu Yuan frowned and pondered the cause.

As he thought, the woman beside him slowly opened her clear, tranquil eyes. Her cool voice came softly from beside him.

"Has your Alienation Syndrome passed?"