Chapter 244: I'm Sick? How Come I Didn't Know?
Bei Bei's question hung in the air, falling heavily upon the shores of Sea God Lake. The setting sun cast a brilliant golden hue across the rippling water, yet the warmth of the evening failed to reach the small group gathered on the banks.
Huo Yuhao stood rooted in place. His knuckles were bone-white as he clutched the dark red stalk of the Lovesick Heartbroken Grass.
His cracked lips parted slightly, but no sound emerged.
Every pair of eyes remained fixed upon him. Xu Sanshi's brow was locked in a deep frown, carving harsh lines across his forehead. Jiang Nannan's gaze swam with unconcealed anxiety, while Xiao Xiao stood off to the side, her eyes still puffy and rimmed with red.
A short distance away, Wang Dong'er remained perfectly still. She made no move to approach, nor did she speak a word. She simply watched him, her clear eyes searching his battered face.
Drawing a ragged breath that rattled in his chest, Huo Yuhao finally broke the silence.
He began to speak of the letter.
His voice was hoarse as he recounted the missive handed down by Tai Tan and Niu Tian. The letter claimed that Wang Dong'er suffered from a fatal congenital hidden ailment, one that could only be cured by the legendary Lovesick Heartbroken Grass hidden deep within the Ice and Fire Yin Yang Well of the Sunset Forest.
He explained how he had departed immediately after reading those words, leaving no word behind for the academy. He spoke of encountering Wang Qiu'er along the road, and how she had insisted on accompanying him into the perilous depths of the forest.
Here, Huo Yuhao's voice faltered. He cast a fleeting glance toward Wang Dong'er before forcing himself to continue.
They had crossed paths with Liu Yuan, Du Busi, and Long Aotian in the heart of the Sunset Forest.
When the topic shifted back to Wang Qiu'er, his tone dropped to a somber murmur. He revealed the truth that had shattered his understanding. Wang Qiu'er was not human. She was the Imperial Auspicious Beast of the Star Dou Great Forest, the legendary Three-Eyed Golden Lion.
It was Liu Yuan who had pierced through her flawless disguise. Under the overwhelming pressure of Du Busi's terrifying cultivation, she had been forced to revert to her true form.
Xu Sanshi's frown deepened into a severe scowl.
"The Imperial Auspicious Beast? That Wang Qiu'er?"
Huo Yuhao offered a stiff nod, offering no further elaboration on the matter.
Instead, he shifted his account to the harrowing events at the Ice and Fire Yin Yang Well.
He described the suffocating miasma of the toxic mist, the ancient formations guarding the valley, the sentient Delicate Fragrance Silk Immortal Orchid, and the elusive poison scripture.
He admitted his failure to pass the plant's trial. Yet, Du Busi had simply bypassed the rules, using sheer, tyrannical force to compel the immortal herb into surrendering the manual.
While Liu Yuan casually harvested a multitude of priceless immortal herbs, Huo Yuhao had trailed behind, desperately scouring the valley for the Lovesick Heartbroken Grass. It had taken him an agonizing amount of time to finally locate it.
Then came the extraction of his heart's blood.
He spoke of driving a blade into his own chest, carving through flesh to let his lifeblood drip onto the stubborn petals of the immortal herb.
But his blood had been frozen solid. It was not ordinary frost, but an absolute, unyielding ice that refused to melt under any conventional means.
He recounted his desperate, failed attempts to thaw it.
Driven to the brink, he had prepared to throw himself into the boiling Yang spring to melt the frost with his own burning flesh. It was only the sudden intervention of Liu Yuan, who had yanked him back from the lethal waters with a manifestation of heavy chains, that spared his life.
Huo Yuhao's voice grew impossibly quiet.
He deliberately omitted the humiliating detail of kneeling and kowtowing until his skull fractured. He merely stated that Liu Yuan had provided assistance, and that the Snow Empress had manifested to carefully strip the absolute ice from the immortal herb.
With the ice removed, he had pierced his chest a second time. More heart's blood was spilled. This time, the trial succeeded. The grass bloomed, allowing him to harvest it and bring it back to Shrek Academy.
A suffocating silence descended upon the shores of Sea God Lake.
Bei Bei stood completely mute.
His gaze drifted from the thick, blood-soaked bandages wrapped tightly around Huo Yuhao's chest, to the raw, unhealed lacerations marring his face, and finally to the unassuming dark red plant clutched in his trembling grip.
Bei Bei opened his mouth, desperate to ask a dozen different questions, but the sheer weight of the revelation left him entirely at a loss for words.
Xu Sanshi was the first to shatter the quiet, his voice thick with disbelief.
"You are telling us Wang Qiu'er is a soul beast? The Imperial Auspicious Beast herself? She traveled by your side for that long, and you never noticed a single flaw?"
Huo Yuhao shook his head slowly.
"No. Her disguise was absolute perfection. Even a supreme expert like Du Busi failed to see through it initially. It was Liu Yuan who noticed the truth."
Xu Sanshi fell silent, his jaw clenching.
Jiang Nannan stepped closer to Xu Sanshi, her gentle eyes shifting from Huo Yuhao's battered form to Wang Dong'er.
Her voice was soft, yet her question cut straight to the core of the matter.
"Dong'er is sick? What kind of illness?"
Xiao Xiao immediately chimed in, her tone laced with frantic worry.
"Exactly! Dong'er, are you feeling unwell? How come you never breathed a word of this to any of us?"
Wang Dong'er stood frozen in place. The dying light of the setting sun cast a long shadow behind her. The deep concern she had harbored for Huo Yuhao's injuries slowly dissolved, replaced by a deep, creeping confusion.
She looked at Huo Yuhao, then lowered her gaze to the dark red stalk of the Lovesick Heartbroken Grass in his hand. Her delicate brow furrowed.
"I am sick?" Her voice carried a genuine, baffling bewilderment. "How come I did not know this? My health is perfectly fine."
Huo Yuhao turned to stone.
He stared at Wang Dong'er's face, taking in the genuine confusion etched across her features and the utter lack of recognition in her eyes.
His hands began to tremble. This was no longer the physical shaking born from massive blood loss or deep exhaustion. This was an uncontrollable, violent tremor erupting from the very depths of his soul.
The mocking words of Liu Yuan echoed in his mind like a death knell.
'When you get back, go ask Wang Dong'er yourself whether she is actually sick or not.'
At the time, he had dismissed Liu Yuan as a meddlesome outsider who simply did not understand the gravity of the situation.
Tai Tan and Niu Tian were Wang Dong'er's revered elders. They were family. They would never lie to him about something so critical.
The letter had been agonizingly explicit. Dong'er's illness was congenital, fatal, and only the Lovesick Heartbroken Grass could save her life.
He had never harbored a single shred of doubt regarding the authenticity of that letter.
But now, standing right in front of him, Wang Dong'er was plainly stating she had no idea she was even ill.
Huo Yuhao's mind shattered into a chaotic mess of conflicting thoughts.
Every single question, every barbed doubt that Liu Yuan had casually tossed at him in the Sunset Forest, suddenly surged to the forefront of his consciousness.
If Tai Tan and Niu Tian were truly that powerful, why did they not retrieve the herb themselves?
Even if the immortal herb's trial rejected them, why were they unwilling to at least escort him to the valley?
If her condition was truly a matter of life and death, why did they send a mere youth to brave one of the deadliest zones on the continent entirely alone?
What if he had perished in that toxic miasma? What would have become of Wang Dong'er then?
He had been unable to answer those questions in the forest, blindly brushing them aside with the naive belief that the elders simply had their own unspeakable difficulties.
He had desperately wanted to trust Tai Tan and Niu Tian. He had refused to cast suspicion upon the two men who raised the girl he loved.
But now, Wang Dong'er was standing right before him, completely oblivious to any illness.
Huo Yuhao's hands shook violently.
The Lovesick Heartbroken Grass swayed in his erratic grip. A single drop of condensation gathered on its dark red leaves, sliding off the edge to strike the earth below, instantly seeping into the damp soil of the lake bank.
"How can that be..." His voice was barely a whisper, a hollow sound devoid of life. "The letter clearly stated... you were dying... and you needed this herb to survive..."
Wang Dong'er's frown deepened into a severe scowl.
She closed the distance between them, her eyes darting from the dark red plant in his trembling hand up to his pale, devastated face.
"What letter? Are you talking about the one inside the silk pouch my First Uncle and Second Uncle asked me to pass on to you?"
Moving with agonizing slowness, Huo Yuhao reached into his robes and extracted the crumpled, blood-stained letter. He offered it to Wang Dong'er.
His fingers were spasming so badly that the parchment fluttered in the air. Wang Dong'er reached out, taking the letter and carefully unfolding the creased paper.
She scrutinized the handwriting with absolute focus.
She read every word, tracing the lines from the very top to the bottom signature, and then read it all over again in reverse.
The confusion on her face slowly hardened into a grim solemnity, eventually settling into an expression of indescribable, turbulent complexity.
"This is indeed First Uncle and Second Uncle's handwriting." Wang Dong'er's voice was eerily flat, but her own hands had begun to tremble. The crisp paper rustled faintly between her fingers.
"But I am not sick. I have never suffered from any hidden ailment. From the day I was born until this very moment, my health has been absolutely flawless."
All color drained from Huo Yuhao's face.
It was not the waxy pallor of a man who had bled too much. It was the ashen, bone-deep gray of a man whose entire foundation of belief had just been obliterated by a catastrophic blow.
His lips quivered. A thousand words clawed at his throat, but his vocal cords refused to function. He could not force a single syllable past his teeth.
His mind flashed back to the horrors he had endured at the Ice and Fire Yin Yang Well.
Driving a blade into his own flesh. Carving his chest open to harvest his heart's blood. Watching it drip, drop by agonizing drop, onto the unyielding petals of that herb.
Slicing himself open a second time after the absolute ice had taken hold.
Preparing to throw himself into a boiling spring of lethal Yang energy, fully expecting to be boiled alive. Kneeling upon jagged rocks, slamming his head against the stone until his skull cracked and his own blood blinded him.
He had endured all of it, every second of excruciating torment, because he believed he was buying Wang Dong'er's life with his own.
But now, she was telling him she had never been sick at all.
Had he just been a performing monkey? A clown dancing for the amusement of others?
Huo Yuhao's body swayed dangerously. His knees buckled, forcing him to stumble half a step backward just to keep from collapsing.
Xu Sanshi lunged forward, gripping his shoulder to steady him. Huo Yuhao regained his footing, but his eyes remained hollow, his face resembling that of a corpse.
Witnessing his utter devastation, Wang Dong'er silently folded the letter and stored it away within her storage soul tool.
Her voice remained flat, but the terrifying undercurrent of suppressed fury was unmistakable.
"I am going back to the sect. I will find First Uncle and Second Uncle. I will make them give you a proper explanation for this."
Huo Yuhao opened his mouth. He wanted to tell her it was fine, that there was no need, but the words turned to ash in his throat.
He did not know what to say. He did not know what to do.
He simply stood there on the shores of Sea God Lake, clutching the legendary Lovesick Heartbroken Grass as if he were holding the punchline to a cruel, sickening joke.
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