The wound

The newcomer was Ji Xie.

He crouched in front of Li Xian, bringing their eyes level, that infuriatingly unflappable smile still on his face.

Li Xian stared at that face for two seconds before suddenly remembering something important.

How long had he slept?

Li Xian tried to stand, but his legs were still weak. In his urgency, he simply shoved Ji Xie's head aside.

Only after seeing the still-bright sky outside the window did he breathe a sigh of relief. Then he turned a suspicious look on Ji Xie.

"What are you doing here?"

The alerts announcing his declining HP were still ringing nonstop in Ji Xie's ears, making him instinctively tilt his head.

He stared into Li Xian's eyes and assessed him inwardly:

Clear eyes, fluent speech, coherent thoughts.

Was this how someone with a fatal wound should look?

He reached out to touch the bandages on Li Xie's chest, but Li Xian raised a hand to stop him.

The force was so weak it might as well have been nonexistent.

Ji Xie frowned. Holding Li Xian's wrist with one hand, he easily unwound the "bandages" wrapped around his chest with the other.

An extremely deep wound came into view.

And the slender wrist in his palm carried an exceedingly faint pulse.

Clearly, he was barely holding on.

It wasn't that Ji Xie had never seen people or corpses more badly injured than Li Xian was now. He had simply never seen a human reach this point without screaming and begging for mercy.

He shifted from crouching to kneeling on one knee, leaning forward and lowering his head to study the knife wound intently.

Ji Xie's hair fell over his forehead, hiding his expression from Li Xian. All Li Xian knew was that he kept staring at his chest.

After dealing with a pervert like Zhou Shan, Li Xian had become far more wary of other people's gazes, though he didn't show it.

And just then, he remembered what Ji Xie had said at the beginning:

"What a shame. I don't like women."

Li Xian's hair stood slightly on end, and he uncertainly held a hand in front of his chest.

[Poor beautiful guy. Zhou Shan gave him PTSD.]

[But why does the mood seem kind of weird...]

[You know, compared with Zhou Shan, I'm suddenly finding this scene pretty easy on the eyes.]

[Enough, you guys! The streamer is seriously injured right now!]

Only when his view of the wound was blocked did Ji Xie raise his head, meeting Li Xian's wary gaze.

He suddenly realized that, to a human, what he had just done might have been rather impolite.

Possibly even sexual harassment.

Wait.

That wasn't what he'd come here for!

Only then did Ji Xie remember what he had intended to do. He immediately straightened and rose from the floor.

He pulled a sheet of paper from inside his clothes and tossed it in front of Li Xian.

Li Xian picked it up. It was covered in incomprehensible symbols; the only two characters he recognized were his own name in the bottom right corner.

"Sign this, and your skill will automatically deactivate."

For some reason, this Li Xian's skill had an absurdly high priority. Even Ji Xie had needed considerable effort to obtain an item that could nullify it.

An ordinary person's skill wouldn't have worked on him at all.

Li Xian held the paper, finally giving up on deciphering the scrawl. "Why should I sign it?"

"You think you can clear the instance with your body in that state? I'm offering you a quick death."

Ji Xie spoke as though this were perfectly reasonable, even with a trace of pity that he apparently considered thoughtful.

Only then did Li Xian truly realize that he wasn't human.

Though his appearance, speech, and behavior were more lifelike than those of the villagers in the instance, he was still fundamentally different from humans.

Perhaps the coldness and arrogance he displayed now were his true nature.

An inexplicable irritation rose in Li Xian, and he found Ji Xie's behavior thoroughly obnoxious.

So he reached out, intending to tear the paper in half and fling it in Ji Xie's face.

He couldn't tear it.

Li Xian settled for crumpling the paper into a ball and throwing it at Ji Xie's feet.

"I don't need it."

His voice was resolute.

Ji Xie looked at Li Xian's pale face, utterly baffled.

"I've seen far too many humans show their ugliest sides before dying... Why do you still want to live when you're already in this state?"

Li Xian gave a cold laugh.

"You only saw what they looked like before they died. But if you'd asked them then whether they wanted to live..."

"Every one of them would have said yes. And I'm no different."

"Then you're all very strange."

"Say that again when you're about to die."

Li Xian's tone was calm, but his words had an edge. Belatedly, Ji Xie realized he seemed to have angered him.

The alerts were still chiming incessantly in his head. Ji Xie clicked his tongue, kicked the paper ball aside, and bent down again.

"What are you doing?"

Although the skill stipulated that his marriage partner couldn't hurt him, given Ji Xie's character, Li Xian strongly suspected he would find some way to make him suffer after being mocked.

Tickling him, for example.

The act itself certainly wouldn't count as harm, but the resulting laughter would pull at his wound.

Li Xian tensed, waiting for Ji Xie's next move, only to see his palm settle over his chest.

...Was he planning to use physical disgust as his strategy?

Ji Xie looked at Li Xian's expression, as though he were facing a formidable enemy. He didn't know exactly what Li Xian was thinking, but it certainly wasn't anything good.

His palm lightly touched Li Xian's wound, then swiftly withdrew. Before Li Xian could figure out what he was doing, he had straightened up again.

"You..."

Li Xian was about to ask when he suddenly realized the stabbing pain in his chest had eased considerably.

Ji Xie raised an eyebrow.

"What are you looking at me for? Those alerts about your HP dropping keep going off in my head. They're annoying as hell."

Li Xian recalled the system alerts that had been sounding nonstop ever since he'd been stabbed.

...They were pretty annoying.

The knife wound on his chest was still there, but it was no longer bleeding, and the pain had eased considerably. Li Xian tentatively pressed the skin around it.

[HP -1]

"..."

Ji Xie was speechless. "Why don't you press it a few more times? Maybe it'll split open again."

Knowing he was in the wrong, Li Xian didn't argue. He braced his hands on his knees and stood.

He moved his arms a little. Finding nothing seriously wrong, he said to Ji Xie, "Can you give me another jacket?"

Ji Xie said, "You're really pushing your luck!"

"The bandages counted as my clothes, but you pulled them off."

With his energy restored, Li Xian began spouting nonsense with complete confidence.

Ji Xie felt that both his dignity and his intelligence had been insulted.

He remembered this brat being a little quiet around other people, but he hadn't been this rude, had he?!

In the end, he decided not to stoop to this human's level. He threw his jacket in Li Xian's face and stalked off.

Only after putting on the jacket did Li Xian relax.

After all, he wasn't in the habit of going around shirtless.