After Swapping Identities With My Archenemy - Chapter 49

Chapter 49: The Altar

The mist before them was suffocatingly thick. It was so dense that Jiang Huaiyi felt her skin growing damp.

Shen Wensi was leading her, and she was pulling her Senior Sister. In the gloom, Jiang Huaiyi could only see a corner of Shen Wensi’s wide sleeve; her face was already lost to the white void. She felt like she was drowning in the air. Tiny droplets of water condensed on her face and hair, as if she were being sprayed by a fine shower. Her clothes grew heavy and wet.

The moisture on her eyelashes gathered into heavy beads that slipped into her eyes. Unable to free her hands to wipe them, she blinked forcefully, trying to push the stinging water out.

In that instant of closing and opening her eyes, the world shifted violently.

The cold, wet mist vanished. Instead, she felt the warm hand of Jiang Younian holding hers. She was sitting in a rocking chair under the golden sun, right in front of the Qingyun Temple. On the table before her was a plate of peeled tangerines, along with snacks like sunflower seeds and peanuts.

Jiang Younian was wiping Jiang Huaiyi’s hands while a neighbor gossiped about local trivialities. The sound of laughter drifted into her ears, pulling her thoughts into a peaceful haze.

Jiang Huaiyi’s grip loosened as she heard her Master say, “Eat a little to tide you over. Once your Senior Sister comes back with food from Wencui Pavilion, we’ll have our meal.”

The terrifying scenes of the Underworld weren’t forgotten, but they felt blurry, like a half-remembered nightmare. She rubbed her head, looking at her surroundings with a sense of strangeness. The pursuit and the fear felt like a bizarre dream she’d had while napping in the sun.

She picked up a tangerine segment and put it in her mouth. Despite the warm sun, the fruit was icy cold, its sweetness spreading through her mouth. That familiar sense of happiness surged again. She smiled involuntarily, taking the sunflower seeds her Master handed her and beginning to crack them.

But the seeds had no taste. The figure of her Master began to distort. The sunlight felt like the flickering, greasy glow of a dying candle, melting away.

Jiang Huaiyi squeezed the seeds in her hand. Her palms were sweating. She felt as though someone far away was calling her name. Her Master’s hand remained warm, her expression calm and loving.

“Xiao Yi, stay here and live with Master, okay?”

Jiang Huaiyi drifted for a moment. Then, the memories of why she was in the painting flooded back. Since she was a child, she had been lonely. After being adopted, she spent most of her time alone—eating alone, sleeping alone, doing everything alone. Even though her Senior Sister looked after her at school, people bullied her. Her Senior Sister had her own life, her own Master, her own friends.

She had lived in that loneliness for nearly twenty years, only daring to cry at night when her Master appeared in her dreams. When she woke up, she was always back in a silent room. She had always felt that such solitude was her lot in life, yet she felt she had forgotten something important.

She looked down at the hands covered in fine wrinkles and, with great difficulty, pulled her own hands away.

“You know that since I was little, I craved company. You always appeared in my dreams.”

“I longed for you to truly come back to life… but I know you are just my imagination.”

The kind face before her slowly formed a smile. Jiang Huaiyi’s heart ached; she fought back tears. She knew this was an illusion, and she knew that if she rejected it, this version of the person she loved would disappear forever.

But she spoke anyway: “My Master wouldn’t want me to stay here. You’ve done a very good job mimicking her—mimicking the scenes I’ve fantasized about for countless nights. My Master wants me to be happy, but she would never let me indulge in a lie.”

“She always told me to face reality. Even when I was too young to understand death, she told me she had been gone for years. She said even if she wasn’t in the mortal world, she would still be with me. She told me to walk forward bravely.”

The figure before her became even more kind, patting Jiang Huaiyi’s head without a word. Jiang Huaiyi stared at her face, greedily trying to memorize every detail. No dream had ever felt this real—the warmth of the old lady’s hand was exactly as she had imagined.

The calling in her ear grew more urgent. Swallowing her grief, she blinked hard once more.

Everything before her melted like charred candy. She was still holding the hands of her two companions, but the mist had vanished. The voice calling her belonged to Chu Lianxue, whose eyes were full of concern.

Jiang Huaiyi couldn’t hold back the bitterness anymore. Her lip trembled, and she began to sob.

Chu Lianxue frowned. “Why are you crying? You were just caught in a trance. You were holding my Junior Sister’s hand and trying to crack her fingers like they were sunflower seeds! She’s the one who should be crying. Pull yourself together, Daoist Jiang.”

Jiang Huaiyi took several deep breaths. The tears wouldn’t stop, but she managed to choke out an excuse: “Sand got in my eyes… and I was afraid to let go and get lost, so I held on tight.”

She glanced down at Shen Wensi’s hand and saw a small, faint bite mark on her fair fingertip. Shen Wensi was looking straight ahead, avoiding her gaze. Jiang Huaiyi whispered an apology. She followed Shen Wensi’s line of sight, failing to notice that the other woman’s ears were slightly red.

The mist had cleared. They hadn’t run far. Before them stood the massive black pillar, its top still lost in the heights, draped with countless corpses. Some were mummified, some still had rotting flesh; the ones at the bottom were the freshest.

“This place is revolting,” Chu Lianxue explained as Jiang Huaiyi looked around in a daze. “We just figured out what’s going on.”

“This is a massive sacrificial altar. Everything hanging here is nourishment for the scroll. This map is no longer the ‘Eighty-Seven Immortals.’ The ‘missing’ immortal has set up a miniature Underworld here.”

Everything clicked in Jiang Huaiyi’s mind. No wonder the City God had tried so hard to tempt her to stay. If she had agreed, her soul would have been bound by contract. Upon “death,” she would have become one of the bodies hanging on the pillar, feeding the demonic scroll. This was how the painting had survived for centuries—by absorbing the soul power of others to strengthen itself.

Suddenly, she remembered what she had forgotten. She began searching the pillar frantically.

Song Rong was missing. Jiang Huaiyi was certain the girl was innocent, having stumbled into this by pure accident. She was an ordinary person with no defense against these spirits. If the painting only took those who made wishes, why was a bystander like her still trapped?

As Jiang Huaiyi ran toward the pillar, the others followed. “What is it? What are you looking for?”

Jiang Huaiyi clenched her fists, scanning the fresh bodies at the bottom. “Song Rong! Song Rong is gone. Have you seen her?”

The closer they got to the altar, the more oppressive the atmosphere became. Jiang Huaiyi noticed that the “black” pillar was actually white underneath; the dark color was simply layers of dried, ancient blood.

Her throat tightened. If Song Rong was put on that pillar, she was as good as dead.

The group began a frantic search, but the pillar was isolated in an open space. There were no hiding spots. Even the cracks in the pillar allowed one to see the hollow interior. After a full circle, they found nothing.

Jiang Huaiyi felt a momentary relief, followed by a sharper fear. Not knowing where she was was just as terrifying.

Suddenly, a series of ka-ka grinding sounds erupted. The massive black pillar began to rotate slowly. The white spikes growing from the backs of the victims pressed against the stone, acting like natural drainage pipes.

As the sickening sound intensified, the bound victims began to moan and writhe. As they lost blood, they grew cold and lethargic, their bodies shivering in unison.

Jiang Huaiyi’s heart ached, but she didn’t move to save them. She had seen their greed earlier; these people had known the price and chosen to stay for their desires.

The fresh blood was absorbed by the pillar the moment it touched the stone, like a sponge soaking up water. Jiang Huaiyi could see faint wisps of white mist in the blood the “Three Souls and Seven Po” of mortals, dissipating into the scroll.

With a loud thud, the pillar jerked. A figure was suddenly ejected from the hollow center.

The person was thrown across the ground, sliding to a halt, unconscious. Following close behind was the City God. His face was deathly pale, but his red robes were more vibrant than ever, flowing around him like living waves of silk.

He walked toward the unconscious figure. Jiang Huaiyi saw the pale face of the person on the ground.

It was Song Rong.

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