Black Crow Prison (28): Duel
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The following day.
Mu Xinning awoke before dawn had fully broken. After breakfast, she lay on the bed, staring blankly.
She watched the shadows of the trees sway across the ceiling, her gaze hazy with exhaustion. She had barely slept the night before; her mind kept replaying the moments she had spent with Mo Yichen over the past few days.
He was gentle, utterly different from Jin in temperament.
Though the two of them were, in truth, the same being, Mo Yichen stirred in her a completely different kind of heartache.
Why was she so uneasy now...?
Jin was looking forward to battling Mo Yichen. He wanted to prove to this duplicate that the original was the original—that the original would always be stronger than a duplicate!
“Stop dragging your feet.” Jin’s voice rang out in her mind, his deliberately suppressed nervousness audible beneath the words. “If you don’t go now, that fellow will grow impatient waiting.”
Forget it. She would stop thinking about it!
When Mu Xinning rose, the tentacles at the small of her back curled restlessly. She reached out and touched the skin there.
She knew that Jin had spent the past few days studying ways to counter Mo Yichen. He had even been learning Mo Yichen’s techniques, then practicing them over and over.
He really wanted to win, she thought.
She picked up the doll from the bed and headed for the rooftop.
...
The wind on the rooftop was fiercer than she had imagined that day, whipping her face with the salty, fishy scent of seawater.
Mo Yichen was already standing at the edge. His white coat snapped loudly in the wind, while his white hair gleamed coldly in the morning light.
When he saw Mu Xinning arrive, the tension in his violet eyes eased slightly. He gazed at her petite figure with deep affection.
“Are you ready?” he asked.
But the question was not meant for her.
“Of course,” Jin replied.
Mu Xinning said nothing. She merely stepped back half a pace, giving the two of them enough room.
If she could, she truly did not want them to fight.
But if Jin wished to become whole again, this was a necessary process.
Mo Yichen... would ultimately have to be absorbed. Mu Xinning closed her eyes. At that moment, she did not dare look into his.
Every time she saw his face now, the unease in her heart grew stronger.
Then Jin’s tentacles burst from the small of her back. His dark-violet body gleamed with a metallic sheen in the morning light, the tips aimed straight at Mo Yichen’s throat.
“I will be the one who wins today,” Jin declared.
He copied the ambush Mo Yichen had used on the rooftop last time, driving his tentacles straight toward him!
Yet Mo Yichen seemed to have anticipated it. As he twisted aside, countless tentacles surged from his lower back as well.
Those tentacles possessed an eerie flexibility. As they coiled around the path of Jin’s attack, they formed a defensive posture identical in every detail to the one Jin had used several days earlier.
“As expected.” A trace of excitement colored Jin’s voice. “The techniques I know—you know them too.”
Although they were different individuals, they were ultimately the same person. Naturally, the techniques they used had to be identical.
Jin simply did not possess those memories. But after watching Mo Yichen’s attacks, he only had to imitate them to reproduce them himself.
The instant the tentacles collided, they rang out with the crisp sound of metal striking metal.
Jin attacked with sweeping, powerful movements. Every blow carried a sharp whistle as it tore through the air, clearly copied from the wide-area suppression Mo Yichen excelled at.
Mo Yichen’s counterattacks, however, were treacherous and uncanny. His slender tentacles always managed to circle around their defenses from impossible angles.
Mu Xinning stood where she was, watching the two figures flash across the rooftop at high speed. Their tentacles repeatedly ripped through the air and smashed into the ground, leaving craters of varying depths.
She suddenly realized that they were not fighting at all.
They were testing one another—and, more than that, issuing a challenge.
The two battled for a long time, yet neither gained the upper hand.
“We’ll never determine a victor like this.” Frustration edged Jin’s voice. He had clearly studied his opponent’s patterns inside and out, but every time he was about to land a decisive blow, Mo Yichen neutralized it with one of his own hidden trump cards.
Mo Yichen’s tentacles suddenly wrapped around Jin’s. Their attacks locked in place at once.
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Jin stared at the dark-violet body within arm’s reach and suddenly smiled.
“Do you really think we’re only comparing techniques?”
Before the words had even faded, he abruptly withdrew his strength.
Jin’s attack surged forward under its own momentum. The tip instantly stabbed toward Mo Yichen’s chest.
This was the killing move Jin had concealed for a long time, aimed specifically at the blind spot Mo Yichen exposed whenever he dodged.
Mu Xinning’s pupils contracted sharply. Her eyes snapped shut, and her heart pounded violently as that unease rose within her once more.
She did not dare look.
But Mo Yichen did not dodge.
At the very instant the tentacle shot toward him like lightning, he suddenly turned and lunged toward Mu Xinning instead. The hem of his white coat brushed her cheek, carrying with it the familiar scent of disinfectant.
“Ah—!”
The next second, he had pinned her tightly in his arms, and the two of them rolled to the ground.
Splurt—
The sound of a tentacle piercing flesh rang beside her ear, muffled and horrifying.
Struggling, Mu Xinning lifted her head and saw Jin’s tentacle drilling into Mo Yichen’s chest. Bright red stained the dark-violet body.
Mo Yichen looked down at her. There was no pain in his violet eyes, only a satisfaction so tender it was almost gentle.
Mu Xinning was stunned by that look.
The unease in her heart continued to spread. A sharp pain seized her chest. There was no denying it—she had come to feel sorry for this duplicate.
Why was he looking at her like that...?
Could he please stop smiling like that...? Please...
She wanted so badly to make him stop, but Mo Yichen held her firmly in place, leaving her no choice but to stare into his eyes.
“You’re insane!” Jin roared, his voice making the rooftop tremble. Yet his tentacle remained frozen, afraid to move again. “You could have dodged!”
No... That was not right!
He had not wanted to dodge!
Jin could feel that Mo Yichen had lost his will to fight the instant he was pierced.
He had deliberately allowed himself to be struck!
“I know...” Mo Yichen’s voice was faint as a dying breath, though a smile curved his lips. He raised a hand and pressed it against the back of Mu Xinning’s neck, forcing her to look at him. “But I’m willing...”
His fingertips brushed through her hair, as though confirming something. Blood from his chest trickled between his fingers and dripped onto her clothes.
“You deliberately lost to me!” Jin shouted. He was furious and utterly unwilling to accept it. “Why would you do this?!”
He had been looking forward to fighting him with everything he had...
Because of his severe injury, Mo Yichen began coughing up blood.
“Cough... Because I want to return the two things most important to you... I told you that if you defeated me, I would tell you. Once you absorb me, you’ll understand...”
The two things most important to him?!
Was that really the only reason?
Jin simply could not accept such an outcome.
Mu Xinning had lost her voice. She did not know what to say. All she could hear was the sound of her own breaking heart.
Why...?
If it had not been for Jin, Mo Yichen might still have been able to live well...
She knew this was not Jin’s fault, yet her heart felt unbearably heavy. She wanted Mo Yichen to survive.
Mo Yichen seemed to understand what she was thinking. His large hand gently brushed across her face.
“Don’t be sad.” He suddenly turned his head toward the dark-violet mass of tentacles trembling in shock. “He simply... hasn’t learned how to care for others yet.”
My original self has only forgotten how he feels about you...
Once he remembers... he will surely love you just as I do...
Very, very much...
After saying this, he lowered his head and pressed a light kiss to her forehead. Then, trembling, he reached inside his white coat and took out a silver pendant.
The pendant was soaked in blood. When he opened it, a tiny photograph lay embedded inside.
It showed him standing in a hospital corridor in his white coat. In the background, the sign for Room 401 could be vaguely seen.
“Keep this...” He pressed the pendant into her palm, his fingertips cold. “Don’t forget... there was once someone who wanted to have breakfast with you for the rest of his life.”
As Mu Xinning closed her hand around the pendant, his hand suddenly fell limp.
The light in his violet eyes faded like ashes after a fire, slowly darkening until it finally settled on her face, carrying a trace of unfinished longing.
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With the last of his strength, Mo Yichen wiped the blood from Mu Xinning’s body. After placing the doll and the pendant against her chest, he toppled to the side.
Jin’s tentacle withdrew from Mo Yichen’s body. Blood covered the dark-violet form, yet it was trembling.
He looked at Mo Yichen lying on the ground, then at the pendant in Mu Xinning’s hand. His throat felt inexplicably tight, and his voice came out hoarse.
“Idiot... Fool... I refuse to acknowledge this... I absolutely refuse...” he cursed, but he did not move again.
They had not yet determined a victor.
How could Mo Yichen simply die like this...?
I was supposed to defeat you fair and square! How could you—
An indescribable emotion spread through Jin’s heart.
Was it resentment? Pain? Sorrow?
He did not know.
The morning light completely flooded the rooftop, dyeing Mo Yichen’s body a translucent gold. From the wound in his chest, tiny particles of light began to emerge, gradually dissolving into Jin’s tentacles.
The instant he absorbed Mo Yichen, Jin reclaimed not only his power, but also that crazed love.
And then came the surging fragments of memory—
“Urgh—!”
Jin felt as though his head were splitting apart. Those memories poured into his mind like a breaking tide.
As his skull seemed ready to burst, he saw a scene within the shifting phantom of memory.
A petite silver-haired girl stood before a white-haired man. She wore a white dress embroidered with golden floral patterns. The man, dressed in a white coat, possessed a cool and distant air.
In her sweet, soft voice, the girl pleaded, “Professor, please let me stay... Peipei... Peipei will be very good...”
The man’s voice was low and magnetic.
“I don’t have time to look after children.”
“Really... You really can’t?” the girl asked again, trembling.
The man looked at her. Perhaps his heart had softened, or perhaps he had merely grown impatient with her pestering.
At last, he agreed.
“...Very well. You may stay, but you must obey and you must not interfere with my research. If you can do that, I’ll let you remain here.”
The girl smiled with delight.
“Yes! Peipei will definitely be a good girl! Thank you, Professor Mo!”
Then she followed the man into the building with tiny, hurried steps.
...
Jin desperately wanted to see the two figures clearly, but there were simply too many memories, too fragmented and scattered. He could not process them all at once, and his mind was in utter chaos.
Mo Yichen had known that he was only a duplicate, yet he had still given her a gift that would never be forgotten.
Though he had died as a duplicate, everything that belonged to him would return to the original. From then on, the original would take his place and cherish her properly.
For the sake of being with the girl in his memories, he had willingly given up his life so that the original could remember her.
...
After being swept by the flood of memories, Jin felt dizzy. His tentacles suddenly withdrew, and then fell completely still.
Mu Xinning knew that this duel had produced no winner.
The clear sky began to change. A raindrop landed on the back of her hand. She picked up the pendant from her chest and turned it over.
A line of tiny words was engraved on the back:
For Peipei, on the day you remember me.
She gazed blankly at the sky. Before she knew it, a light rain had begun to fall, drops striking her body.
She felt as though she were crying, but by then she could no longer tell whether the wetness on her face came from rain or tears.
“Who... am I, after all...?”
Soaked through by the rain, Mu Xinning stared at the sky and murmured to herself.
The rain continued to fall, taking in all their sorrow...
...
[Beep! The player has defeated the dungeon boss... Calculating your results...]
[Congratulations, player, on clearing the Black Crow Prison dungeon!]
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