Alienation Syndrome

"."

The air seemed utterly still.

Xu Yuan slowly turned his head to look at the woman beside him.

The slightly familiar term, accompanied by Ran Qingmo's serene gaze, just as clear as when they had first met, made his hair stand on end.

He suddenly understood where the pain that had come from deep within his bones before he passed out had come from.

Alienation Syndrome.

Absurdity, helplessness, and a trace of sudden realization.

[Upon reaching Origin Beginning, one could enter the realm through martial arts, achieving an undying body that could be reborn from a drop of blood. One could also enter the realm through qi, solidifying one's mind and spirit to leave the body and seize another's soul.]

Possession was possible in this world. But who could have guessed that crossing between worlds would give him Alienation Syndrome, too?

Apart from the howling wind, the vast Snow Plain was silent and desolate.

Xu Yuan remained silent for a long while, then said softly:

"Alienation Syndrome?"

Ran Qingmo looked at Xu Yuan and nodded.

"Mm."

Xu Yuan narrowed his eyes and gave an ambiguous, faint smile.

"Miss Ran, what do you mean by that?"

Ran Qingmo looked straight into Xu Yuan's eyes.

"You're not Xu Changtian."

"." Xu Yuan.

Her voice was still calm, as if she were stating something utterly ordinary.

With his suspicions voiced by the other person herself, perhaps because of the fogginess brought on by his long unconsciousness, Xu Yuan found that he wasn't panicking at all about having his identity exposed.

There were only two paths before him now.

Admit it, or deny it.

If he denied it, what excuse could he use to fool her?

If he admitted it, what would happen?

After a long silence,

Xu Yuan slowly rose to his feet. Under Ran Qingmo's gaze, he picked up the waterskin beside him and took a mouthful of Flame Spirit Fluid to warm himself. He looked up at the impossibly high mountain peak, then gazed by moonlight toward the endless Sea Border below.

During the four days he'd been unconscious, Ran Qingmo and that huge white tiger had actually dragged him halfway up Heaven Gate Mountain.

Having roughly gathered his thoughts, Xu Yuan turned back to Ran Qingmo and said slowly:

"Does it matter to you whether I'm Xu Changtian?"

Without denying it, Xu Yuan calmly admitted the truth.

All Ran Qingmo needed was a living Xu Changtian, a Third Young Master she could use to threaten the Prime Minister. How he was "alive" didn't really matter.

And she must have already figured that out. Otherwise, she wouldn't have brought him, unconscious, along the planned route to Heaven Gate Mountain.

Ran Qingmo thought it over seriously for a moment, then shook her head.

"It doesn't matter. But why don't you understand cultivation?"

As she spoke, a genuinely puzzled look flashed across her eyes.

The change in Xu Changtian's personality before and after he fell unconscious had indeed been explained. But if the man before her had clearly been reincarnated through possession, why was he as clueless as an infant about cultivation?

Holding the waterskin, Xu Yuan sat down beside Ran Qingmo. His heartbeat steady, he raised a hand and pointed at his head, speaking unhurriedly.

"Because I've lost a lot of my memories. A lot of things are just fragments."

"Including the cave abode you mentioned?"

"Of course."

"What about the things concerning Xu Changtian himself?"

"I don't know. Maybe the cultivation method I practice is special. Among these scattered memories are some from before, as well as a few that Xu Changtian left behind by accident."

"Then how did you learn about the Sword Sect?"

"."

At that, Xu Yuan didn't continue answering. He simply smiled and shook his head.

"Miss Ran, didn't we agree not to pry into each other's affairs?"

"."

At his words, Ran Qingmo's beautiful eyes, visible beneath her black veil, flickered for a moment. In the end, she nodded.

Seeing this, Xu Yuan took advantage of the chance to lay everything out and continued:

"You probably won't listen, but I still want to advise you: that person won't change his decision because of me—or Xu Changtian."

As he spoke, he met Ran Qingmo's gaze and enunciated each word.

"If you really want to stop the Sword Sect from being destroyed, there's a better way. I can help you."

The destruction of the Sword Sect was a major plot point in Cangyuan. If he made good use of Ran Qingmo, Xu Yuan could reap plenty of benefits.

But there wasn't the slightest wavering in Ran Qingmo's eyes. She simply looked at him in silence.

Seeing this, Xu Yuan smiled faintly and stopped trying to persuade her.

"My offer will always stand. If you change your mind, you can come to me anytime."

Ran Qingmo's refusal had not surprised Xu Yuan.

Though he and Ran Qingmo were now in the same boat, their identities made it all but impossible for her to trust him.

She'd agreed to follow his suggestion and go together to the cave where he'd been hiding mostly because he was so weak that he posed no threat to her.

A threat?

Wait.

Xu Yuan's train of thought suddenly came to a halt.

He realized there was a flaw in his reasoning.

The plan to go to the cave abode had rested on him being too weak to threaten Ran Qingmo. But the sudden flare-up of Alienation Syndrome had invalidated that assumption.

Upon reaching Origin Beginning and entering the realm through qi, one could solidify the mind and spirit, then leave the body and seize another's soul.

A person at that level could be said to stand above the world.

If Xu Yuan remembered correctly, Ran Qingmo hadn't reached that level at this point in time.

In Ran Qingmo's eyes, the cave abode he'd mentioned must have belonged to him in his previous life.

In other words, in her eyes, Xu Yuan had gone from a powerless, spoiled young master to a mysterious remnant soul capable of threatening her.

Xu Yuan stared at the black-clad woman, who had once again closed her eyes to rest. Many questions crowded into his mind.

Had she not noticed this, or had she noticed and simply not cared?

No. There was no way Ran Qingmo didn't care.

Confidence wasn't the same as arrogance.

The formations and restrictions in the former cave abode of a powerhouse at Origin Beginning could certainly threaten the Ran Qingmo of today.

If so, why did she still dare to follow him to the cave abode?

A sense of foreboding gradually rose in Xu Yuan's heart.

After a moment of silence,

Xu Yuan slowly looked down at the waterskin in his hand—or rather, at the Flame Spirit Fluid inside it.

The basis of their cooperation was the fact that the person behind the Flame Spirit Python wanted him to die on the way Ran Qingmo took him away.

The thought surfaced.

Xu Yuan realized

that something must have happened during the four days he'd been unconscious.

And whatever it was had forced Ran Qingmo to go with him to the cave abode.

Moonlight poured down like a waterfall, and the silence was as still as water.

"Crunch, crunch—"

Amid the swirl of his thoughts, the sound of footsteps on snow came from afar. Xu Yuan immediately turned to look. When he saw who was coming, the worry in his heart eased a little.

It was the big white tiger.

But the big white tiger was now a whole size larger than when he'd first seen it four days ago. It seemed to have undergone some kind of transformation, probably from eating quite a few demon cores while following Ran Qingmo these past few days.

Humans couldn't consume demon cores directly, but to demons themselves, they were a great tonic.

The big white tiger came running over, a snow wolf more than two meters long clamped in its jaws.

Its enormous body ran up beside Ran Qingmo. It dropped the snow wolf, rubbed its head affectionately against the hem of her black robe, then shot Xu Yuan a disdainful glance. It didn't even eat its prey, simply flopping down beside Ran Qingmo and dozing off.

Everything fell silent again.

Beneath the moonlight in the snowy mountains, the black-clad woman and the enormous white tiger made a peaceful, harmonious picture.

Xu Yuan's gaze remained fixed on the big white tiger's back.

There,

where he had once sat,

a deep wound, cut to the bone, stood starkly exposed.