Upon Her Lips - Chapter 15

Chapter 15

You are a plague! You shouldn’t even exist in this world!”

“If it weren’t for the money, I never should have taken you in.”

“You useless waste who can’t even speak clearly, you useless stutterer.”

“Good afternoon, little one.”

“You shall be born for Mu Fei, and die for Mu Fei.”

…

Fragmented voices repeated endlessly in her mind. Within the chaotic darkness, it felt as if countless sounds were piercing her eardrums, violently pulling at her blurred ability to think.

She felt incredibly stiff, racked with tearing pain.

It was as if countless hands were propping her up, trying to tug at her nerves just to deliver a single message:

(Wake up)

With a sudden gasp, Yuran snapped her eyes open. She breathed heavily, her vision pitch black until the obscuring mist dissipated, gradually giving way to a hazy sight.

Was she dead?

Yuran struggled to prop herself up.

Her body, however, had no strength. She knelt on the ground, hunched over, observing her surroundings in a daze.

She had landed near a small stream. It was a miracle that she hadn’t died falling from such a height. The freezing stream water soaked her body along the gully, stimulating her sensory nerves.

It was bone-chilling.

She had to leave this place, or she would freeze to death in this icy water. She forced herself to ignore the weakness in her limbs, pushing off the ground with her hands to slowly stand straight.

Once, twice…

After many attempts, she finally lifted her frail body out of the water. She panted heavily, but as she inadvertently glanced down, she stared in horror at her reflection in the water.

Her face was a strange, ghastly pallid stone-grey.

Her eyes were entirely black, devoid of any normal white. Something like a crack appeared beneath the corners of her eyes, where strange, golden markings flickered in and out of sight. Her hair had turned completely silver. It was utterly terrifying.

She let out a scream of fright and scrambled back, landing hard on the stones of the stream bed.

Ignoring the shock of the icy water, she frantically extended her arms to check herself. The eerie surface of her skin rapidly transformed back into a normal skin tone. She stared blankly at this transformation which took only seconds, then hurriedly leaned over the water to check her face again.

A normal face. It was a normal face!

She rubbed and slapped her cheeks hard with her hands. Only after confirming it repeatedly did she breathe a sigh of relief.

That monstrous image just now must have been an illusion. An illusion! She must have been so scared that she saw such an unrealistic and terrifying sight.

Yuran quickly scooped up some stream water to splash her face, trying to clear her head. She had to survive. She had to find those small purple flowers, find the exit, and present the flowers to Lady Mu Fei. Otherwise, her coming here would be for nothing.

She remembered clearly the last words that man had said to her. She couldn’t understand why he wanted to kill her, just as she didn’t know why her own mother hated her so much.

Yuran stumbled to her feet. Leaning against the nearby trees, she slowly made her way to solid ground, searching for her backpack—it contained the wooden box she had prepared for the flowers.

She looked around the vicinity and finally saw the backpack hanging from a broken branch. The contents were scattered across the ground, including the box, which had been smashed into pieces.

Yuran picked up the wooden box, and tears suddenly flooded her eyes. She began to cry out of sheer grievance.

The eerie Black Mist Forest seemed to sense the sadness in the girl’s heart. The black mist gradually gathered, growing thicker and more intense, eventually veiling the entire sky and turning the grey afternoon sky into a deep brownish-red.

It was a color close to hell, carrying a heavy sense of unease.

“KUI—YIN—!”

Then, cracks split open along the rocky peaks beside Yuran. From within the crevices, brown, vine-like meridians spread out from all directions until they converged near the girl.

To be precise, they converged at the backpack beside her.

With a whoosh, they coiled around the bread wrapped in the paper bag, preparing to slowly carry it away along with the backpack.

However, the paper bag dragging across the ground made a distinct noise. Yuran immediately sensed something was wrong. Her small, tear-stained face turned, and she happened to see this strange thing scavenging through her bag.

“Ah, th-this…!”

She let out a startled, single-syllable cry. Though her voice wasn’t loud, it frightened the strange lifeform. The brown tentacles instantly released her backpack and retracted rapidly, shrinking into the crevice a few meters behind.

Yuran stared at this moment, stunned. The vine-like tentacles had vanished into the crack in an instant.

What was that…

Yuran, who had been grieving moments ago, was suddenly captivated by this strange thing. She picked up her wooden box, stood up shakily, and slowly walked toward the crevice.

She had seen those things retract into it with her own eyes. Perhaps driven by a child’s natural curiosity, she was actually brave enough to peer inside to find out.

Suddenly, a head with a lower jaw resembling an octopus peered out cautiously. It ended up in a wide-eyed stare-down with Yuran, who was looking down into the crack.

“AH—!!”

Terrified, Yuran fell backward onto the ground. Simultaneously, the strange lifeform was also startled and used its tentacles to cover its own face once more.

Only after a few seconds did it crawl out from the crack.

Yuran’s eyes widened as she looked at this strange creature that resembled a human yet was not. It had numerous tentacles on its lower jaw, its body was covered in deep blue scales, and it even trailed narrow little wings behind its back. Its body wasn’t large, about the size of a newborn foal, or perhaps a bit smaller.

In the sensory world of a normal human, the first reaction to such a bizarre, unnatural creature should be fear. However, Yuran didn’t seem to feel a physiological sense of dread toward this creature. She observed it with great curiosity, without a hint of fear.

Those pitch-black, insect-like pupils observed the strange human child in return.

“Y-You,” Yuran looked at the small creature and saw that its front claw, near the barb, had been cut by something. “You… h-hurt.”

The small creature couldn’t understand her words; it just watched her warily.

Yuran had no choice but to point to her own arm, and then point to its claw. The creature finally understood and looked down at its front left limb.

Then it saw the girl searching for something in her backpack. She pulled out a small bottle and walked up to it.

“Th-this… is… m-medicine.”

Yuran held the small bottle of wound ointment in her palm, explaining cautiously. She slowly approached the creature, but it gave her no chance, recoiling from her touch.

Yuran then poured the medicine into her own palm and applied it to her own red, swollen hand, demonstrating that she only wanted to do the same for it.

After a standoff between goodwill and suspicion, Yuran finally applied the ointment to the wound of the living thing she had met in this Black Mist Forest. She even tore a piece of her own sleeve to tie a bow around its bandage.

“L-like… this… it… will… g-get better… faster.” Yuran said as she tied it with trembling fingers.

She didn’t know if the little thing could understand, but she knew that although this creature looked strange, it harbored no ill intent. It was even more timid than she was, recoiling its entire body at a single touch.

What Yuran didn’t know was that this creature she found “strange” was not something that could be touched at will. The surface of its skin carried the corrosiveness of an abyssal curse. Upon contact, any human or low-level vampire would be consumed by the backlash, melting into nourishment for the Black Mist Forest within seconds.

Just as Yuran turned around to pack her bag, a Death Eagle—half the height of an adult—which had been lurking in the trees waiting for an opportunity to hunt, prepared to pounce on the human girl.

But this Death Eagle failed to notice the heartless “living thing” crouched beside Yuran. Just as the eagle dived, a long, powerful tentacle instantly pierced its internal organs. The secretions on the surface of the blue scales instantly dissolved the giant bird’s body.

Blood was absorbed through the pores of the tentacle.

Yet, this skin secretion, undetectable to the naked eye, seemed to have no effect on the human girl.

“K—KUI—YIN—?”

While absorbing the corrupted nutrients from the Death Eagle’s body, the creature tilted its head strangely, staring at its front claw tied with a bow. It seemed completely unable to comprehend how this human girl could touch it.