Tang Wulin, is this your plan? To watch your best friend get beaten into this state?
Night.
The lights were off in the working students' dormitory. Moonlight squeezed through a gap in the curtains, which had not been drawn all the way, laying a narrow band of silvery white across the floor from the windowsill to the foot of the metal bed frame. The dormitory was quiet except for Xie Xie's breathing, heavy and hurried, like a cat struggling to calm down after someone had stepped on its tail.
Tang Wulin sat on the edge of Xie Xie's bed, looking at him as he lay there.
His gaze was cold.
Cold as iron soaked in icy water. His lips pressed into a thin line, his jaw taut, the muscles bulging slightly beneath his skin. He silently questioned himself. He stared at Xie Xie's back—the clothes had been cut open, exposing skin mottled with bruises and several wounds of varying depths. The deepest stretched from his shoulder blade down to his waist, the flesh torn and curled back, its edges crusted with dark red scabs. Gravel was embedded in the wound like shards of glass lodged in mud.
Tang Wulin could not understand.
Why had he put on such a stupid act? He had pretended to be sent flying by the King Kong Baboon, pretended to be unable to fight, and let Gu Yue carry him into the sky, leaving Xie Xie alone on the ground. He could clearly have hammered that baboon into the dirt with one blow. He could clearly have ended the battle in three seconds. But he had not. He had chosen to put on that act because he wanted to see what Yuanen Yehui's martial soul really was, to force her to reveal herself in a