“Zhao Zhihua… could you give me a hand? This tent seems to be stuck.” A bead of sweat the size of a bean rolled down Yueye’s forehead… Even after three days, her abdomen still hadn’t healed. She could only just manage to get around on her own…
“…” Zhao Zhihua glanced over at Yueye, seeming not to hear her request at all… He stayed where he was, acting as if he hadn’t heard a thing…
“Um… Zhao Zhihua, could you help me?” Yueye thought he hadn’t heard her… so she raised her voice a little…
“…” This time, Zhao Zhihua didn’t even look her way… He simply walked off in the opposite direction…
“…..Should I take that as you not hearing me, or as you deliberately shutting me out…?” Yueye watched him walk away and muttered, a little annoyed. She felt somewhat better today, so she’d come to help everyone set up camp… But of all the luck, the tent in her hands had gotten stuck. With her injuries, she couldn’t pull too hard… The moment she strained, the muscles around her abdomen tensed and sent pain stabbing through it…
“Zhu Chao… could you give me a hand?” Yueye looked around again and saw that Zhu Chao was the only one who seemed relatively free… So she asked him for help.
“Uh, my stomach hurts a little… Could you wait a bit?” Zhu Chao avoided Yueye’s eyes… He looked reluctant to go near her…
“All right…” Yueye sighed helplessly… A trace of sadness showed in her eyes. Like a sulking child, she tossed the tent onto the ground… Then she stamped her little foot, hauled at it with her arms, and used her body as a fulcrum to pull…
“Crack! Bang!” The two sounds made everyone turn around… The part of the tent that had been stuck had come loose, and it lay spread out on the ground… Yueye, meanwhile, had fallen over, clutching her lower abdomen… Red blood seeped out once more from the middle of her blue skirt…
“Yueye!” Liu Huiying was the first to run over… She’d thought Yueye was well enough to move around on her own. She hadn’t expected her to push herself so hard that she’d even help with the work…
“Wah…” Pain from the wound reopening reddened Yueye’s eyes… A few stubborn tears slipped down and fell onto Liu Huiying…
“You silly girl! Who told you to push yourself? I said you were only supposed to move around a little!” Liu Huiying scolded her angrily. It seemed that ever since that night, she’d been looking after Yueye like a little sister…
“I thought I could do it…” Yueye gritted her teeth against the stabbing pain in her abdomen. Her voice was as faint as a mosquito’s…
“You idiot!” Liu Huiying scolded her as she tended to Yueye’s wound…
Liu Huiying suddenly remembered something… She just couldn’t understand why Yueye had been working here all by herself…
“And you people standing around here… couldn’t any of you lend her a hand? She’s still injured!”
“…” The people nearby lowered their heads… They didn’t apologize… They didn’t even say a word…
“Did Yueye do something to offend you? You’d all be dead without her! Do you even realize that?” Seeing how everyone was acting, Liu Huiying couldn’t hold back from berating them.
“We almost died because of her, too!” Wang Qian said coldly from the side… Her words sent a chill through Yueye.
“That was an illusion! What is wrong with you people!? You’re blaming Yueye for everything?” Liu Huiying was completely incensed by that one remark…
“Then who’s going to take the blame? How do you know it was an illusion!? Who knows if she’ll turn into that thing again and come after us!” Wang Qian shouted back, refusing to give an inch… The two girls started arguing. But the more Yueye listened, the more miserable she felt. She was angry at being treated unfairly, but she also felt miserable knowing she’d become the reason the team was falling apart again…
The two argued for a while, and their voices grew louder and louder…
“That’s enough!… Both of you, get back to work! No one’s at fault here! There’s no point arguing!” Su Lin couldn’t stand watching any longer and snapped at them… But his outburst only chilled Yueye and Liu Huiying’s hearts further.
“No one’s at fault? Su Lin? Say that again…!? Yueye was so badly injured… She gave the team all her reward points… and all she gets in return is ‘no one’s at fault’!?” Liu Huiying froze for a moment after he snapped at her… Then she rose from the ground with a cold laugh and mocked Su Lin…
“It was the illusion’s fault!… Yueye’s identity is still a mystery, so it’s only natural that people have their doubts!… We all need time to process this!… Now calm down and get back to what you’re supposed to be doing!” For the first time, Su Lin felt his position in the team being challenged… Embarrassed, he forcefully ordered Liu Huiying around… The truth was, he wanted to avoid the question of who should take the blame, too…
“Fine, fine!… Su Lin, now that you’ve got power, you want to rule like a dictator!? Have you forgotten who gave you the points to change your attributes!?” Hearing his tone, Liu Huiying lost her temper…
“I’m telling you to calm down! I’m not being a dictator!… Once you’ve calmed down, we can talk this through. I’m sorry for the angry things I just said… All right?” Su Lin realized he’d said the wrong thing… but suddenly found himself with no way to back down.
“Fine. I’ll wait for your explanation…!” Liu Huiying glared at everyone around her… From where she stood, they all seemed like ungrateful traitors. She turned away and went back to check on Yueye… Not realizing that Yueye was worrying about something else entirely…
‘Something’s got its eye on you. Be careful. I don’t know what it wants…’ White Radiance’s voice suddenly sounded in Yueye’s mind… It stirred something in her just as she was sinking into despair.
‘It’s watching me…?’ Yueye asked hurriedly. She wondered what kind of creature could make even White Radiance wary…
‘It’s after your bloodline!… Be careful… It sensed the Dragon Clan aura released by your negative emotions! It’s coming!’
“Roooar…!” Before White Radiance could finish speaking… a massive gust of wind slammed into the area like a wall, toppling the surrounding trees one after another… Several people lost their footing and were swept off their feet by the powerful wind.
Before anyone could figure out what was happening… all they could see was blue ice-flame and a scene straight out of hell…
Trees snapped in half and burned in blue flames… In an instant, the dense forest around them had been cleared away, leaving a hellscape of blue fire… High above, a huge figure beat its enormous wings… stirring up powerful currents of air… Its golden-yellow pupils fixed on Yueye.
Under that stare, Yueye didn’t dare move. She could only wait as the blue flames slowly receded, leaving a vast clearing and revealing the full form of the giant blue dragon in the sky.
‘This is your clan’s business… Go sort it out yourselves!’ At that moment, White Radiance seemed to have figured out why the dragon had come, and fell silent in an instant… leaving Yueye alone, clutching her abdomen and staring fearfully at the creature high above—the being at the pinnacle of this world.
“Roar… Boom!” Before Yueye could react, the dragon high in the sky moved. Its enormous blue shadow swept over everyone’s heads… It circled once, then suddenly swooped down to land…
Its huge, golden-blue slit pupils fixed on the group, and its terrifying dragon aura engulfed them all…
“…I’ll give you two choices… The first: you all die… The second: hand over the blue-haired girl… I want her life…” The dragon’s deep voice rumbled with anger, keeping everyone’s heads bowed… The creature before them was a dragon from myth and legend. They had no chance of fighting it…
As one, everyone turned their eyes to Yueye… Their gazes were filled with fear and pleading… As if to say, “Please… I don’t want to die…” They knew that facing the creature before them meant certain death. So when forced to choose between dying and living, they chose to live… even if it meant sacrificing their teammate.
“……” Yueye’s eyes turned cold in an instant… At that moment, her heart sank to the bottom. Everyone was using their eyes to push her toward death… even though it wasn’t fair…
She’d thought this team trusted one another so completely… She’d thought this could be a place she called home…
But what she hadn’t considered was that everyone on the team was still in high school… They weren’t some kind of heroes… They all wanted to live…
“Every man for himself…” Yueye thought of the saying… This was humanity’s ugly nature. The defenses around her heart had crumbled completely… She couldn’t think of any reasonable explanation for why the team she’d given so much for was treating her this way…
…She had no power to choose… The moment the dragon said those words, her sacrifice had already been decided…
“I understand… You can go.” Yueye’s voice trembled… No one could face death without fear… Only despair and having nothing left to live for could let someone face death calmly in their final moments. And in the last moments of her life, Yueye chose to make one final decision for the good of the team… even though it was a team that had brought her nothing but despair.
“Yueye…!” Liu Huiying suddenly realized something and chose humanity over survival… Even though she, too, had been among those whose eyes pushed Yueye toward death, when Yueye said those words… she felt her conscience being put to the test.
“Just go…” Su Lin didn’t respond to Yueye. Instead, he grabbed Liu Huiying by the hand and pulled her toward the forest… He was so heartless that he didn’t look back at Yueye once along the way… He knew he couldn’t look. His conscience had already been pushed to its limit. He was afraid that if he turned back, his conscience would lead the entire team to its doom…
The whole team left without looking back… Yueye saw every last thing they did. Each action poured more salt into her already shattered heart…
At this final moment, Yueye actually laughed… It was a broken, twisted laugh that sent a chill through anyone who heard it… Everything she’d endured that day had made her start to doubt the choice she’d made in the beginning…
“…You made a wise choice,” the dragon said, watching everyone but the blue-haired little girl before it slowly disappear into the distance…
Without a sound, a ring of ice walls slowly rose from the ground, separating Yueye and the dragon from the outside world…
Inside the ring of ice walls, the dragon studied the little girl below it as if she were a work of art…
